Introductory Chemistry Labs

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Hello all,

I have recently finished a pilot study along with some colleagues in my school. We have been looking at the motivation and perceptions of students for chemistry when they enter an introductory chemistry unit. We have conducted surveys and focus group interviews and we have a large amount of data to go through. However, one of the findings we have that is of particular interest to me is when we asked the students about their feelings towards the compulsory lab sessions. My initial thought would be that with increased familiarity with the labs that confidence would increase. However, we didn't find that. By the end of semester when students answered that question they stated that they felt overwhelmed and worried about the labs. I found this interesting because it is something I can work on in developing the introductory labs so that at least the students confidence and appreciation in the labs would increase and not decrease. These students have little or no background in chemistry so should I change the labs for these students? Does anyone else run an introductory chemistry unit where the students are not intending in majoring in chemistry but need it for another course? Do you run your labs in the same way for these "non-chemists" as your "chemists"? Any thoughts would be great.

Dino

Madeleine Schultz's picture

This is a bit surprising. We have never surveyed students about this but it always SEEMS like they get better and more comfortable as the semester goes on, they learn where everything is in the lab, get to know the demonstrators etc. Perhaps the lab manual could be modified or pre-labs introduced?

We haven't transcribed all the interviews yet from our students, however, by looking through the comments it was clear that students felt like they were being examined in the lab session. We have a fill in the box style lab book which forms the assessment. There are a number of questions to answer in each experiment and a number of students complained that there was too little time to complete the experimental procedure and answer all the questions. Maybe you are right and the lab manual needs to be modified.
How many of us in this group provide fill in the box lab manuals at first year level as opposed to writing a lab report? What forms a good balance between asking questions and practical work? Are there any studies that I could read that has looked into this balance?
Dino

Emma Bartle's picture

Hi Dino,
The "fill in the box labs" for the Intro Chem unit have been in place since 2009 (I wrote it) - prior to that students used to have to answer a series of questions in their separate lab notebook as they went through. There was some literature published as part of the ACELL project supporting the new lab manual format. I believe it's on their website, otherwise I'm sure I'll have copies amongst my old UWA stuff. Please let me know if you'd like me to try and dig it out and send to you. I know one concern I used to get from the students was that, at that time anyway, all 6 labs were completely different skills and experiments, so they didn't get opportunity to build on previously learned lab skills and develop confidence in those techniques.
Cheers,
Emma