Introducing Incremental Levels of Inquiry in an Undergraduate Chemistry Laboratory: A Case Study on a Short Lab Course

Abstract

The chemistry laboratory is an impactful platform for introducing inquiry and developing science practice skills. We designed a short lab course to introduce incremental levels of inquiry, also to interconnect and integrate different domains of chemistry. Indigo dye was the central theme of this short course wherein students synthesized indigo, dyed the yarns, analyzed the generated wastewater, and, finally, devised a treatment plan. This article describes the implementation of this short course as an explorative case study with 12 first-year undergraduate participants (4 small groups). Our study aimed to understand how science practice skills could be developed through the incremental approach to inquiry levels. The lab task sheet, lab reports, and transcripts of the group discussion were used as the data for qualitative analysis. Additionally, responses in the questionnaire were analyzed to understand students' perceptions and their experiences in this course. The results indicate that introducing inquiry at an incremental level is a promising approach to help students develop science practice skills. The first two experiments helped students to learn to formulate a hypothesis. The third and fourth experiments helped students to learn to design experiments. The quality of the hypothesis and explanation offered for observations enhanced with the progress of the course. The lab report pointers helped students to communicate their results systematically and helped to establish a connection between the hypothesis, data, and explanations, favoring the engagement with science practice skills.

Loopholed Scripts: A New Inquiry Approach for the Undergraduate Laboratory

“…Further development of these ideas is expected in the form of teaching-learning sequences comprising multiple activities; those activities will have progressive inquiry levels, culminating in the level we propose in this work. An article published in this journal intervened in a similar way, and we expect that with such a multistep approach, structured toward increasingly (according to the openness levels) complex and demanding classes, we can find a more significant effect on the student’s overall scientific development.…”

Implementation of the Experimental Design Outcome in the Chemical Engineering Degree Program at Technical University of Madrid (GIQ-ETSII-UPM)

“…Hanson et al recommended that when undergraduate chemistry degree programs are being revised, additional opportunities should be provided for developing generic skills: oral presentation, planning and design of experiments, and instrumentation and analytical techniques. This redesigning of the curriculum requires enormous effort. , The results obtained by Varadarajan and Ladage indicate that introducing inquiry at an incremental level is a promising approach to help students develop science practice skills.…”

“…This redesigning of the curriculum requires enormous effort. 7,8 The results obtained by Varadarajan and Ladage 9 indicate that introducing inquiry at an incremental level is a promising approach to help students develop science practice skills.…”