Teaching to a class of Chemical Engineering Graduate Students Unscripted

Yesterday I taught ChE 654 - Corrosion. The course description read as follows:

Fundamental principles including thermodynamics and kinetics of corrosion; forms of corrosion (e.g. galvanic, crevice and stress); methods of corrosion measurement; high temperature corrosion; and special case histories.

I decided not to use my standard Powerpoint Presentation that is found linked at http://library.njit.edu/researchhelpdesk/subjectguides/chemistry.php . I told the students that they could use the narrated or non-narrated version of this presentation.

I did cover main points such explaining the peer review process and distinguishing between Scifinder Scholar and Scopus. I also explained how basic information about the corrosion process could be found in textbooks. In this class I explained the significance of cited references and showed how they can be found in the two databases.

I did get training passwords for Scifinder that could be used for one day. I allowed the last half of the session for students to use the database to do their assignment. Some of the questions were:

• Find a Pourbaix diagram for the lead-water system
• Find some information about corrosion in soil
• Find information on who to measure a corrosion current.