Aligning General Chemistry Laboratory With Lecture at a Large University

Abstract

The laboratory and lecture components of general chemistry are commonly offered as two separate courses, with lecture typically meeting two or three times per week and laboratory scheduled to meet only once per week. The concepts, content, and relationships presented in lecture may be disjointed and asynchronous with respect to those encountered in laboratory experiments. In addition, traditional laboratory experiments tend to be confirmation labs, in which students are aware of the “right” answer before beginning the lab. Students enrolled in a specific lecture section do not necessarily meet for the same laboratory section. As such, learning experiences in laboratory do little to help the students construct an understanding of chemical concepts, content, or relationships. The goal of this project was to develop an inquiry‐based approach to curriculum and instruction in first‐semester general chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. A major objective of the project was to develop a laboratory curriculum that meshes intimately with lecture. This objective was accomplished by (a) creating a laboratory course that met for 80‐minutes twice a week immediately following the lecture, (b) involving students in laboratory experiments that related to the material presented during lecture, and (c) using laboratory observations and data in lecture to help students construct an understanding of chemical phenomena.

Assessing student process skills and providing feedback to enhance learning in analytical chemistry

“…The plots in Figure 19 show that there was a positive shift in students' perception of their experience in the affective domain between the pre and post survey, and a negative shift in the cognitive domain. While the negative shift in students' cognitive expectations is not desirable, it is consistent with the results seen in other studies [184][185] . These results indicate that more attention should be given to engaging students cognitively during the laboratory in addition to improving the psychomotor and affective aspects.…”

Concurrent enrollment in lecture and laboratory enhances student performance and retention

“…Also, much time and attention has recently been paid to reforming “traditional” learning settings into “studio‐style” settings. In this closely related set of literature, the majority of studies are current; yet report on usually <1,000 students over 1 or 2 years (DiBiase & Wagner, 2002; Hoellwarth, Moelter, & Knight, 2005; Oliver‐Hoyo, Allen, Hunt, Hutson, & Pitts, 2004). Our study is additionally based on relatively current student demographics; as the proportions of female, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Black students in post‐secondary classrooms have steadily increased since the 1970s (U.S. Department of Education, 2011), this research probes a fundamentally different population of students than those in studies from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.…”

Laboratory Education in New Zealand

“…DiBase (2002) and Polles (2006) both came to the conclusion that a good alignment between the different forms of teaching needs to be achieved for maximum effectiveness. DiBase (2002) and Deters (2005) have both suggested strategies for how this may be achieved. The effectiveness of the link between the different teaching techniques, lectures and laboratories, at Victoria University was documented in the corresponding question (see Figure 5.…”