First Year Chemistry Laboratories

Submitted by dspagnoli on Tue, 04/17/2012 - 3:23pm

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Hello all,
I am currently running three first year chemistry labs and from time to time I get some feedback from the students and I wanted to open a discussion on some of the feedback and comments that I have received. The first is related to demonstrators. I think that we all know how important a good demonstrator is in the experience that a student will have during the lab. So my first question is how do you train your demonstrators if you train them at all? Do you look at their background and see if they have actually completed the lab as a student, or do you provide training days where the labs are open for the demonstrators to actually perform the lab themselves?
The second piece of feedback I have been getting is related to the length of the labs. My question is, how do you know how long to make a lab? Some students will just want the answers to fill in and leave the lab. But some are really trying to think about what is happening and will not move on until they do (which is great in my opinion). Therefore they fall behind in the practical part of the lab and sometimes rush to finish the lab. I suppose that this is the problem with having a "fill in the boxes" part of the lab rather than writing a full report after the lab has finished. 
This leads me to my third and final question. Should report writing be part of the first year lab or should it be all fill in the box type write ups? There is a problem in second year labs where the students have no report writing experience until second year. Surely at least one lab in the first year should be with a full write up as part of the practical?
If you have any comments on these questions, or your own questions, please reply.
Regards
Dino

glawrie's picture

glawrie

Thu, 04/19/2012 - 3:37am

Hi Dino
Our pracs are scheduled for 3 hours but actual lab work is around 2.5 to allow for 'write up'.
We have looked at the issue of lab report writing in first year because we found the 'white space' or fill in the box format was not requiring much thought by the students. Our challenge is large numbers of students (>1000 students) and many of the tutors cover more than one prac session so marking load is potentially an issue. We tackled the situation by dividing the components of a lab report across several pracs  ie one prac 'report' asks students to write a brief analysis/discussion of their data, another has assessment based on the data processing and display. In second year the students are asked to bring the components together into a full report.
Gwen

gobrien

Mon, 07/09/2012 - 10:49am

Good day all, Dino, a belated response!
re demonstrators: At UOW we do minimal traning beforehand, a few hours of generic ideas by faculty and institution, and a couple of hours in the lab with lab staff mainly so the techniques used for wet chem are standardised. We certainly do not make it possible for the demonstrators to do all the labs beforehand, much and all as I would like to. The main reasons are time and cost: lab tech staff setting up all the different experiments, whether or not to pay demostrators while they are taking part in the training. 
Length of labs: I will retain the three hours, our prac reports are write up and submit there and then, so some students do exit a bit early but i would rather not rush them all out but give them time to consider their results while they wipe down the bench!  Of course as budgets tighten, that may not remain a choice, however i think I would tend to fewer rather than shorter labs.
Lab reports: we currently have templated lab reports too. Basically we have results, data treatment, calculations, statement of findings...... then a few questions are the end to sort out real understanding of various aspects. The questions can be varied a bit from year to year and are not just "discuss your results." The main principle I have adopted is that at first year, for a wide variety of chemistry degree and applied degree programmes, I utilise the lab writing to learn the science (chemistry) rather than head directly into aspects of practicing the science (chemistry).
regards
glennys