Part A: Course Overview

Course Title: Environmental Analysis in Action

Credit Points: 12.00

Terms

Course Code	Campus	Career	School	Learning Mode	Teaching Period(s)
CHEM1315	City Campus	Undergraduate	171H School of Science	Face-to-Face	Sem 2 2024

Course Coordinator: Dr. Andrew Hung

Course Coordinator Phone: +61 3 9925

Course Coordinator Email: andrew.hung@rmit.edu.au

Course Coordinator Availability: By appointment, by email

Pre-requisite Courses and Assumed Knowledge and Capabilities

Assumed Knowledge
To complete this course successfully, you should have completed First Year Chemistry. 

Course Description

The pollution of our natural environment by different chemical species is a key challenge to our quality of life and community health. Analytical chemistry is an essential tool to monitor, understand, and evaluate the existence of harmful species in our environment, including rivers, soils, oceans, and the atmosphere.  

This course will develop your knowledge of instrumental analytical chemistry in an environmental context. Practical work is designed to develop your skills in using a range of instrumentation, and to illustrate the practical application of the relevant theoretical principles.  

You will appreciate both theoretical and practical aspects of analytical chemistry, and how analysis is a tool to understand the quality of our environment by determining the presence of chemical species. 

Objectives/Learning Outcomes/Capability Development

Program Learning Outcomes 

The course is a program option course, however, will contribute to following program learning outcomes for: 

BP350 (Bachelor of Science)
BP192 Environmental Science 

The course will develop your scientific, critical thinking, problem solving and communication skills, and their application to the study and understanding of fundamental chemistry processes.  

On completion of this course you should be able to:  

CLO 1: Demonstrate a coherent knowledge and understanding of analytical chemistry and instrumental methods of analysis;
CLO 2: Draw conclusions from analytical data provided or collected in the laboratory using appropriate statistical analyses in conventional chemical and mathematical notation;
CLO 3: Demonstrate the ability to communicate results, information or arguments effectively in written analytical reports;
CLO 4: Working effectively, responsibly, ethically and safely in an individual or team laboratory context. 

Overview of Learning Activities

You will be actively engaged in a range of learning activities such as lectorials/tutorials, including both individual and group activities, and laboratory practical classes. Delivery of lectorials and tutorials may be face to face, online or a mix of both. Practical classes will be face-to-face. 

The learning activities included in this course are lectorials where syllabus material presented online will be discussed and explained, and the subject will be illustrated with demonstrations and examples. Completion of tutorial questions are designed to give further practice in the application of theory into practice, and to give feedback on student progress and understanding. Completion of written assignments consisting of numerical and other problems will promote deeper understanding of the subject matter. 

You are encouraged to be proactive and self-directed in your learning, asking questions of your lecturer and/or peers and seeking out information as required, especially from the numerous sources available through the RMIT library, and through links and material specific to this course that is available through myRMIT Studies Course Site. 

Overview of Learning Resources

RMIT will provide you with resources and tools for learning in this course through myRMIT Studies Course Site, where lecture notes, online resources, practice questions, and recorded content wil be available for you to access. 

There are services available to support your learning through the University Library. The Library provides guides on academic referencing and subject specialist help as well as a range of study support services. For further information, please visit the Library page on the RMIT University website and the myRMIT student portal. 

Overview of Assessment

Assessment Tasks 

Assessment Item 1: Online Quizzes
Weighting 20%
This assessment task supports CLOs 1-2. 

Assessment Item 2: Assignment (written)
Weighting 40%
This assessment task supports CLOs 1-3.  

Assessment Item 3: Laboratory Reports (written)
Weighting 40%
This assessment task supports CLOs 2-4. 

If you have a long term medical condition and/or disability it may be possible to negotiate to vary aspects of the learning or assessment methods. You can contact the program coordinator or Equitable Learning Services if you would like to find out more.