The ACELL Project: Student Participation, Professional Development, and Improving Laboratory Learning (original) (raw)

An Investigative, Cooperative Learning Approach for General Chemistry Laboratories

International journal for the scholarship of teaching and learning, 2012

The integration of research and education is an essential component of our university's teaching philosophy. Recently, we made a curricular revision to facilitate such an approach in the General Chemistry Laboratory, to teach students that investigative approaches are at the core of sciences. The curriculum revision included new interdisciplinary experiments and a research project. Investigative, peer review, and cooperative learning strategies were introduced to enhance student learning and engagement. An environment in which students can analyze results within a laboratory session and reach comprehensive and quantitative conclusions was encouraged. To assess our results, students completed questionnaires, evaluated their peers and themselves. Instructors evaluated students through written reports, oral presentations, pre-and post test, a practical exam and a final exam. Assessments of the learning outcomes were performed to determine the level of research skills development, the improvement in laboratory techniques, and depth in analysis of concepts. The experimental designs, implementation of results, and comparisons of student performances using traditional approaches are presented.

INVOLVING STUDENTS IN EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: THREE APPROACHES

M any faculty want to involve students more actively in laboratories and in experimental design. However, just ''turning them loose in the lab'' is time-consuming and can be frustrating for both students and faculty. We describe three different ways of providing structures for labs that require students to design their own experiments but guide the choices. One approach emphasizes invertebrate preparations and classic techniques that students can learn fairly easily. Students must read relevant primary literature and learn each technique in one week, and then design and carry out their own experiments in the next week. Another approach provides a ''design framework'' for the experiments so that all students are using the same technique and the same statistical comparisons, whereas their experimental questions differ widely. The third approach involves assigning the questions or problems but challenging students to design good protocols to answer these questions. In each case, there is a mixture of structure and freedom that works for the level of the students, the resources available, and our particular aims.

Evaluating students’ learning from laboratory investigations

The concept of investigation is a central concept in science. Throughout the centuries, both the meaning of the concept and the characteristics of the processes associated with a scientific investigation have been strongly dependent on the dominant views of science. Nowadays, scientific investigation should be conceptualized as a problem-solving activity. Within the context of Science Education, laboratory investigations have had no clear meaning and been often non-differentiated from other types of laboratory activities. Laboratory investigations should be conceptualized as problem solving activities enabling students to both develop different types of knowledge (conceptual, procedural and attitudinal knowledge) in an integrated way and get into contact with the methods of science. Hence, the evaluation of students’ learning from laboratory investigations should concentrate on all these dimensions and be consistent with the holistic nature of this type of laboratory activity. Thus, the objective of this paper is to discuss the evaluation of students’ learning from laboratory investigations focusing on both the issues that can be evaluated in the different phases of an investigation and how those issues can be evaluated.

APCELL: Developing better ways of teaching in the laboratory

Proceedings of the Australian Conference on Science and Mathematics Education, 2012

The Australian Physical Chemistry Enhanced Laboratory Learning project was established to address deficiencies in Australian physical chemistry laboratory education. The project aims to pool the resources of over 30 universities to develop a protocol for developing and assuring the quality of laboratory teaching experiments. This protocol is based on 'research-led teaching' and is underpinned by education research literature. Because of its grounding in research, the project has demonstrated the potential to generate and support further research on teaching and student learning in laboratories. In this paper we describe the progress of the project to date and some of the research methodologies that have been employed.

Experimental problem solving: a plausible approach for conventional laboratory courses

Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2019

Almost every student is expected to work on a collection of experimental setups to get the desired ‘hands-on’ experience with physical systems during the conventional laboratory courses offered at colleges and universities the world over. In a number of conventional laboratory courses, the ‘minds on’ aspects and related cognitive abilities are not given their due importance, probably for a variety of valid reasons and constraints. This affects the overall learning and development of various capabilities that seems to be achievable through laboratory courses. As a plausible alternative to the traditional method of instruction, ‘experimental problem solving’ approach developed and implemented for the physics laboratory courses by the author is presented here. In this approach, students are given ‘experimental problems’ and encouraged to think and decide on several aspects and thereby perform self-guided experimental work with minimal help from the instructor. For this, each convention...

Prompted" Inquiry-Based Learning in the Introductory Chemistry Laboratory

Journal of Chemical Education, 2004

This article outlines a structured investigative activity for students in lower secondary school. It was developed for the Australian Mathematics and Science Partnership Programme, a government initiative intended to promote the employment of more hands-on investigations in secondary science within Australian schools. The investigation focuses on water purification and is intended to develop conceptual knowledge of this topic and also high-level skills such as experimental design, particularly in relation to identifying and controlling variables. The investigation is outlined in detail and was trialed with practicing science teachers, school students and preservice secondary teachers. All of these groups provided feedback in various forms that indicated the investigation was valuable, relevant, interesting and allowed students to take some responsibility for their own inquiry learning.