Project-Based Learning Experience That Uses Portable Air Sensors to Characterize Indoor and Outdoor Air Quality

Abstract

Understanding how to interpret and manipulate large data sets is increasingly important today; however, this experience has been slow to trickle down to the typical undergraduate student. Here, we describe the implementation of a project-based learning experience that uses portable air sensors for the real-time measurement of carbon dioxide, ozone, and particulate matter, providing students with data sets that include thousands of measurements. These projects allow students to design their own research question and then independently carry out relevant air sampling. Data visualization was used as a tool to identify trends and relationships among analytes and was emphasized as a way to effectively present these findings to an audience. We have implemented the projects over two academic years with diverse student populations, from high school summer research students to senior undergraduate and graduate students in an environmental analytical chemistry course. The extent of mentoring, and the students' competencies in atmosphere chemistry and spreadsheet and graphing software, were not equivalent between these groups, but all were able to execute successful projects. The projects often focused on the indoor environment as concentrations are not well characterized and tend to vary with human activity, which lend themselves to the development of testable research questions. The paucity of data on indoor concentrations means that, in addition to a valuable experiential learning opportunity, students were engaged in a legitimate citizen science exercise as they set about characterizing a diverse set of indoor environments.

Engaging Social Science and Humanities Students in Community-Based Research on Nitrogen Oxide Pollution

“…For example, the measurement of NOx is something that can be done in real time using electronic means. This can create some very interesting opportunities to note the role of transient sources, as was recently discussed by D’eon and co-workers using portable sensors …”

“…This can create some very interesting opportunities to note the role of transient sources, as was recently discussed by D'eon and co-workers using portable sensors. 18 NOx pollution is also something that is important to measure over time, since there can be very large variations depending on weather and human activity given how much NOx pollution is associated with transportation sources. Studying pollutants over time using time-averaged measurements complements real-time data by documenting conditions over all hours of the day and multiple days.…”

STEAM Project-Based Learning Activities at the Science Museum as an Effective Training for Future Chemistry Teachers

“…Chemistry teachers' training courses, pre-service and in-service ones, are fundamental aspects, which are developed in different ways in the various countries depending on the recruitment and school systems. The inclusion of STEM philosophy and project-based learning methods in pre-service teachers' training were object of recent studies [20,37,67,75,83,[86][87][88][89][90].…”

Implementing Project-Based Learning as an Effective Alternative Approach for Chemistry Practical Courses Online

“…For example: Jansson et al (2015) report an example of environmental chemistry courses in which students acquire knowledge of the concepts through different small projects, and this was confirmed by the results of the final exams; Nagarajan and Overton (2019) describe how students connect the knowledge from different disciplines to solve a specific problem, promoting an interdisciplinary approach to the projects . Different reports support the idea that PBL can enhance learning in students by performing practical activities with a practical purpose. − …”