Sample Plan for Easy, Inexpensive, Safe, and Relevant Hands-On, At-Home Wet Organic Chemistry Laboratory Activities

Abstract

An emergent theme from the past spring during COVID-19 remote learning was the difficulty of providing meaningful, relevant, hands-on, wet chemistry experiences at home and the potential impact of their absence upon student learning and engagement. This article shares the process and results of developing an appropriate, easy, inexpensive, safe, and relevant hands-on, at-home DIY kit of wet laboratory activities for a first-semester high school organic chemistry course. Troubleshooting, tips, handouts, and evidence of learning and engagement are provided to supplement the already-published procedures for many of the activities. Whether instructors have already started teaching or are preparing for an upcoming course, this article should enable the rapid incorporation of an at-home laboratory curriculum to supplement student learning and promote engagement with appropriate alternatives to traditional experiments.

LAB Theory, HLAB Pedagogy, and Review of Laboratory Learning in Chemistry during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Reading the special issue presented a good case that the adjustment was indeed advisible, and the process of developing the subsequent at-home, hands-on organic chemistry laboratory curriculum has since been published in this Journal . 35 …”

“… 59 Even my high school organic chemistry students in Fall 2020 at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (Chicago, IL) met my expectations for skill and knowledge development while conducting laboratories at home from a rudimentary lab kit, despite several of the students having only about half a year’s worth of high school general chemistry lab experience to draw on from before transitioning to ERL the year prior. 35 Interestingly, for the report comparing general chemistry students in a traditional lab vs a CURE at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (Omaha, NE), where the students in both groups did the same lab work while remote, there was no statistically significant differences between their pre-/post-test scores (either when compared between the two groups or when compared between the start of the semester to the end) on the CLASS-Chem survey, which assesses “expert-like thinking” in chemistry students. Perhaps this suggests that early hands-on experiences are not sufficient in enacting enduring change if the experiences are not continued.…”

Microscale Educational Kits for Learning Chemistry at Home

“…The use of chemistry kits can help minimize those problems. An interesting kit was reported in this journal after the submission of this work, 9 reinforcing the necessity of developing new strategies for distance learning and teaching chemistry at home. 10 By pursuing versatility, the present kit encompasses a general chemistry approach instead of focusing on a specific experiment.…”

Reassessing Undergraduate Polymer Chemistry Laboratory Experiments for Virtual Learning Environments

“… 41 , 42 Furthermore, take-home chemistry kits for high school, two-year community college, and university students from Brazil and the United States address issues with student access to supplies and tools while offering a safe and often inexpensive alternative to traditional lab experiments. 43 − 45 Overall, there is a consistent motif of kitchen chemistry in terms of learning objectives, such as the realistic learning experiences akin to hands-on laboratories, active engagement with small-scale experiments, and problem-solving during the experiment rather than reading from a recipe. Nevertheless, kitchen chemistry does not fully mimic a laboratory setting and associated safety considerations for laboratories whose objectives are primarily derived from the acquisition of technical skills (e.g., upper-level synthesis techniques).…”