Presentations by Chemical Engineering Students

In ChE 472 students are given a term long assignment to report of the design of a plant to manufacture monoclonal antibodies. I attended the presentations by 3 of the groups last night.

All of them were excellent since they understood the principles involved in designing a plant to manufacture monoclonal antibodies. The grading rubrics were quite detailed. I did see an attribute called “demonstrated use to find information”. I did not see any references to usage of the journal literature in their design process. There were photos of certain plant equipment, but none stated where they obtained the photo. Perhaps students did use the journal literature, but did not document it. This is a disappointment to me since these students were given an exercise earlier in the semester to use Scifinder Scholar and Scopus to find information about monoclonal antibodies.

I suggest that in the future students be required to find some of the information they need through a database search and document that in their presentation? The major aim of our in promoting information literacy is to teach students how to properly use the journal literature in their projects.