Chemistry outreach program and its impact on secondary school students

Chemistry is one of the most difficult subjects and usually feared by the students in elementary schools. Some of the students in Malaysia, especially in the rural area, they memorized experiments and the theories without really understand the beauty of chemistry. They also believed that the chemistry experiment can only be done in the laboratory equipped with a huge fume hood since all of the experiments are dangerous, explosive and costly. Chemistry outreach program held by a team from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia was meant to change the perspective of the elementary students towards chemistry and to develop their interest in exploring the beauty of chemistry. The program took place in Perlis as part of the Science on Wheels Program organized by National Science Centre. Few experiments using chemicals which can be found in daily life were first demonstrated and explained. Then the students were given chances to try on their own. They were also asked to relate what they had learned from the experiments to the phenomenon that occurred in the world. Survey on knowing their interest in chemistry before and after the experiments was given and analyzed. The results showed that the level of liking chemistry and choosing chemistry as one of the career option depended mainly on the exposure towards chemistry. The result showed that 80% of the students were interested in chemistry after they performed the experiments compared to 72% who were interested in the chemistry subject taught in school prior to the experiment. The 8% increment was possibly a reflection of the effective learning through experiment. Overall, 58% of students were interested to choose chemistry as their future career and suprisingly it was not depended on the background of the family. The chemistry outreach program really gave the impact on the elementary students and reached their hearts and should be continued from time to time to attract students to science and technology. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer reviewed under responsibility of the UKM Teaching and Learning Congress 2011.