An innovative way to introduce students to discuss ethical misconduct

CHED 414

Ingrid Montes, imontes@uprrp.edu, Adriana Padilla, adripadilla@gmail.com, Atenaida Maldonado, ateymaldonado@gmail.com, and Solymar Negretti, lovelies8@gmail.com. Department of Chemistry, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, P.O Box 23346, San Juan, PR 00931-3346
The Blackboard-based website for the Organic Chemistry for majors course at the Rio Piedras Campus of the University of Puerto Rico has different discussion boards: one of these is an ethics in science discussion board. It was first used last year for an individually composed assignment, whose objective was to familiarize the student with ethical misconduct in science. This year the ethics discussion board was used on class group project, whose objectives were to familiarize the student with the term “ethical misconduct”, especially in science, to guide the student to evaluate different sources of information and compile data through research for the project while practicing data citation as dictated by the ACS Style Guidelines, and finally the main goal of the project was to peek the student's interest to research, study, and discuss current ethical issues concerning the scientific community. The results and limitations of this study will be presented.