Proficiency of first-year students in quantitative experiments

Abstract

Herbert Spencer published his famous essays on education, the battle has raged over "What knowledge is of most worth," Without venturing into the general topic, we would submit that what is done must be well done if it is to accomplish any of the advertised objectives. The progress of civilization has been marked by the steps taken to establish standards of value. In the last two decades the "standard test" has been introduced into our educational system as an aid in comparing the work in different institutions. While an examination into the merits and demerits of the standard test is beyond the scope of this brief note, it will be obvious that a "standard test" can give no information in regard to the proficiency attained in laboratory technic. It was, therefore, with the idea of encouraging the establishment of norms for laboratory performance that we undertook a detailed analysis of the achievements of students in our beginning laboratory course in chemistry. EXPERIMENTAL DATA* Comparison of grades is not very informative, for a grade is often a better indication of the metabolism of the grader than it is of the quality of work done by the gradee. We selected, rather, the actual figures obtained

Gazing at the Hand: A Foucaultian View of the Teaching of Manipulative Skills to Introductory Chemistry Students in the United States and the Potential for Transforming Laboratory Instruction

“…Other educators used similar normative techniques with student determinations of molecular weights by freezing point and boiling point, percent dissociation of weak acids, solubility products, the normality of acetic acid, the synthesis of cuprous sulfide, and the analysis of iron ore, soda ash, and chloride by volumetric titrations (DeGray, 1932;Farquhar & Ray, 1936;Gilbert & Ware, 1932;Power, 1938). For example, a student performing a freezing point activity was awarded a mark of 75 if the result of the experiment came to within ±2% of the average (DeGray, 1932).…”

“…For example, a student performing a freezing point activity was awarded a mark of 75 if the result of the experiment came to within ±2% of the average (DeGray, 1932). An example of normalized student results can be found in Figure 1 (Farquhar & Ray, 1936). The curve depicts the results of a cuprous sulfide synthesis carried out in a 1st-year chemistry course as a function of the number of students performing the experiment.…”