Progressively Fostering Students’ Chemical Information Skills in a Three-Year Chemical Engineering Program in France Christel Gozzi,* Marie-Jose ́ Arnoux, Je ́ re ́ my Breuzard, Claire Marchal, Cle ́ mence Nikitine, Alice Renaudat, and Fabien Toulgoat Ecole Supe ́ rieure de Chimie Physique Electronique de Lyon (CPE Lyon), Villeurbanne Cedex, France * S Supporting Information ABSTRACT: Literature searches are essential for scientists. Thus, courses on how to do a good literature search have been integrated in studies at CPE Lyon for many years. Recently, we modified our pedagogical approach in order to initiate students progressively in the search for chemical information. In addition, this new teaching organization is now based on a “learn and prompt practice” concept. KEYWORDS: Graduate Education/Research, Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary, Testing/Assessment, Learning Theories, Chemoinformatics, Curriculum, Internet/Web-Based Learning, Chemical Engineering ■ BACKGROUND Presently, with online research databases and articles, accessibility to literature and information has dramatically increased in all domains. In contrast to the past where the difficulty was finding information, it could be considered that the main problem today is to find specific, reliable and relevant information among the huge amount of data available. 1 Navigating through the literature and finding specific resources is a skill which has to be mastered by all scientists. Thus, students need to become familiar with data recorded in specialized books, catalogs, and databases. 2 At CPE Lyon, a French Grande Ecole 3 which offers a Master’s degree in chemistry and chemical engineering, the technique for how to do a literature search has been integrated in the course for many years. Studies at CPE Lyon begin after two years of higher education in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. The engineering course lasts three years and is divided into 6 semesters numbered 5-10. During semesters 5-7, students have three different pedagogical activities requiring different chemical information skills. In semester 5, students have 4-h laboratory sessions in organic synthesis, analytical chemistry, and chemical engineer- ing every week. In preparation for these experiments, students have to search for physicochemical and safety data for the reactants and products. In semester 6, students have a project in organic chemistry and need to search for both general information and chemical procedures in the literature. Finally, a chemical process project involving information concerning thermodynamic and kinetic data and industrial process design is assigned during semester 7. After that, students choose a specialization based on their knowledge and skills. The last year is dedicated to this specialization and includes a semester of academic courses and a six-month internship (Figure 1). (For a more detailed program of the course, see the ref 3.) ■ INCORPORATING SEARCH SKILLS IN THE CURRICULUM During their studies, students should acquire good skills in finding chemical information in all fields of chemistry. Previously, during a 4 h session in the library at the end of semester 5, students were initiated in literature searches using books, handbooks, databases, and so forth. The first problem was that students lacked the ability to find the right information for preparing their laboratory work during semester 5, that is, finding the physical properties as well as analytical information (mp, bp, nDT, IR and NMR spectra) and safety data. In addition, some of the information search tools were presented too early and were then forgotten by the students. Consequently, we modified our pedagogical approach three years ago and divided this course into three 2-h sessions dedicated to data searches consistent with the following pedagogical activities (Figure 2). The idea was to gradually Special Issue: Chemical Information Published: December 21, 2015 Communication pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc © 2015 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc. 576 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.5b00414 J. Chem. Educ. 2016, 93, 576-579