A guided-inquiry experiment was designed
and implemented in an
introductory organic chemistry laboratory course. Students were given
a mixture of compounds and had to isolate two of the components by
designing a viable workup procedure using liquid–liquid separation
methods. Students were given the opportunity to apply their knowledge
of chemical and physical properties of organic molecules as well as
develop their problem-solving skills by designing the workup themselves
rather than following a pre-existing recipe. Students were able to
show that this experiment improved their problem-solving skills and
understanding of chemical concepts related to the workup process.
To be able to design a laboratory course it is important to know what laboratory skills students possess before the course starts. This way the course can focus on developing skills in areas that are lacking. Despite the extensive literature on laboratory education, there are few studies on what laboratory skills students have at this stage of their education. In this work, we aimed to address this by surveying students’ percieved knowledge, experience and confidence of a range of laboratory competencies at the start of a chemistry degree. Our key findings were that students percieved to have knowledge, experience and confidence of performing lower-order competencies such as practical techniques, but lacked the knowledge, experience and confidence to perform higher-order competencies such as designing experiments. From our results, we propose that instructors should be aware that experiments focussing on certain practical skills may not teach students how to perform that technique but are providing more experience and confidence. We also propose instructors should use laboratory courses to teach higher-order skills such as experimental design and problem-solving where these skills are more evidently lacking.
The coordination modes of the [Au(PPh3)](+) cation to metal alkynyl complexes have been investigated. On addition to ruthenium, a vinylidene complex, [Ru(η(5)-C5H5)(PPh3)2([double bond, length as m-dash]C[double bond, length as m-dash]CPh{AuPPh3})](+), is obtained while addition to a gold(iii) compound gives di- and trinuclear gold complexes depending on the conditions employed. In the trinuclear species, a gold(i) cation is sandwiched between two gold(iii) alkynyl complexes, suggesting that coordination of multiple C-C triple bonds to gold is facile.
A traditional laboratory course with the primary learning outcome of improving students' theoretical knowledge has received much criticism over the years due to the lack of evidence that these goals have achieved. We report our efforts to redesign a traditional first-year organic and inorganic (also known as synthetic) laboratory course from having a focus on teaching theory to the development of practical skills. With better alignment between the core learning outcomes of the course and the type of experiments embedded into the curriculum, we report that the redesigned course improved students' practical skills from a number of measures, including students' grades pre-and postcourse and from students' self-assessment of core skills in synthetic chemistry.
Guided-inquiry experiments are an
important tool for helping students
develop scientific practices such as hypothesizing and problem solving.
In organic chemistry, these types of experiments can help students
learn how to connect the theory of the reaction to the observation
and data to decide how the reaction is proceeding or if it needs adapting.
Due to a reduction of in person teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic,
we developed a set of virtual inquiry-based organic chemistry experiments
where students make the same decisions as they would do with a hands-on
inquiry experiment. Thus, these simulations allow students to learn
similar problem-solving skills. In this paper, we provide details
of the simulations and the educational outcomes when they were used
to replace hands-on inquiry experiments. We also include suggestions
for its use postpandemic.
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