Using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Applications to Resonate with Life Science Students

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a quantum technology that is a crucial analytic and diagnostic tool in scientific and biomedical fields and promises to play an important role in the 21st-century STEM workforce. The recent development of inexpensive benchtop NMR spectrometers offers unique opportunities for undergraduate institutions to give their students valuable research skills with this essential technique. Furthermore, focusing on the applications of NMR (e.g., NMR spectroscopy and MRI) can provide much-needed real-world relevance to students’ physics studies. Students studying the life sciences often feel a disconnect to the physics they learn in the standard introductory physics classroom. We hypothesize that incorporating class sessions dedicated to NMR applications in standard introductory physics courses can provide valuable research skills and real-world relevance to all students but may have the largest impact on those studying the life sciences. Through the support of an NSF-IUSE grant, we have established an interdisciplinary and cross-institutional team to develop, assess, and disseminate curricular material that integrates NMR throughout all levels of the undergraduate science curriculum. These materials consist of interactive modules with associated instructional guides and online resources that introduce the topics without expectations of prior college-level science or math courses. Our research shows that students using our modules not only successfully master the NMR content, they also: (1) spend over four times as much time sense-making using our modules as in a traditional lecture course, (2) demonstrate positive scientific identity shifts, and (3) make statistically significant gains in learning attitudes about science and self-assessed research skills. Future studies will explore how these positive impacts differ across different populations of students and how these materials can best be implemented at other institutions.