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Students in advanced undergraduate chemistry laboratories are required to undertake a wide range of complex and multistep syntheses and analytical procedures, and prospective employers of chemistry graduates seek students with proven skills in these areas. Our approach has been to use video resources which are made available to students both ahead of, and during, their laboratory classes to assist with preparation and provide just-in-time self-help during the laboratory. In this study we evaluate the implementation of a user-focused strategy to improve students’ laboratory skills and use a three-stage model, forethought, performance, and self-reflection, to assess the impact and effectiveness of these resources to complement the traditional laboratory teaching resources of laboratory manuals and laboratory teaching staff (demonstrators). Students demonstrated autonomous learning by engaging with the laboratory videos using both active and passive learning approaches. The benefits of our approach are especially evident for students who have English as a second language and students who identify with different learning preferences. Increased student grades and more effective staff-student supervision time requirements are evident across both third-year undergraduate chemistry courses in which these videos were implemented.

Experiments in laboratory manuals intended for general, organic, and biological (GOB) chemistry laboratories include few opportunities for students to engage in instrumental methods of analysis. Many of these students seek careers in modern health-related fields where experience in spectroscopic techniques would be beneficial. A simple, rapid, easily implemented experiment was developed to measure vitamin C levels in solutions using visible spectroscopy. When vitamin C is added to a mixed reagent containing Fe3+ and 1,10-phenanthroline, the vitamin C reduces the Fe3+ to Fe2+ which subsequently combines with the 1,10-phenanthroline to form a reddish-orange colored complex that is measured by visible spectroscopy at 510 nm. The experiment includes measurement of the stability of aqueous vitamin C solutions when exposed to long-term storage and to heat. Students in GOB laboratory classes were able to produce results with good precision. The experiment was also extended to include the measurement of vitamin C...

Chemistry laboratories play an essential role in the education of undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and non-STEM students. The extent of student learning in any educational environment depends largely on the effectiveness of the instructors. In chemistry laboratories at large universities, the instructors of record are typically graduate or undergraduate teaching assistants (TAs). Despite the importance of their role in the education of undergraduate students, TAs’ instructional practices have been largely understudied outside specific reform efforts. In this study, we developed a segmented observation protocol, the Laboratory Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (LOPUS), in order to characterize TAs’ instructional styles in a General Chemistry laboratory curriculum. LOPUS captures both students’ and TAs’ behaviors every 2 min as well as initiators of verbal interactions and the nature of these verbal interactions (e.g., data analysis, explanation of concepts). ...

An approach to create an interactive and inexpensive electronic book (eBook) for an undergraduate biochemistry laboratory course is presented. This approach featured the involvement of an undergraduate student in the lead role of designing and developing the eBook using Apple’s iBooks Author application. The eBook, entitled Introduction to Biochemical Methods, contains original, interactive course content, including laboratory protocols, lecture slides, images, videos, figures, and quizzes. Access to the book content was expanded through the creation of a Web-based version of the book. User access analytics on both the eBook and the Web site, along with student survey data related to the usage of and attitudes toward the eBook, also are presented. Although the Introduction to Biochemical Methods eBook was developed specifically for use in a particular course, adaptation of its content for use in other classrooms is invited, and educators are encouraged to adopt a similar approach (i.e., involving their st...

To support teaching and learning in the advanced placement (AP) chemistry laboratory, the College Board published a laboratory manual, AP Chemistry Guided-Inquiry Experiments: Applying the Science Practices, in 2013 as part of the redesigned course. This article provides a discussion of the rationale for the existence of the manual as well as its form, content, and pedagogical orientation; a summary of the manual’s content and structure; guidelines for how to use the manual in teaching AP chemistry; an overview of the laboratory manual development process; a review of and response to the most common criticisms directed at the manual; and finally a brief preview of future plans to enhance the manual and support its implementation. This contribution is part of a special issue on teaching introductory chemistry in the context of the advanced placement chemistry course redesign.

Laboratory graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) play a prominent role in undergraduate chemistry education. Although the success of a laboratory program relies significantly on the performance of GTAs, only rarely have they been considered actual partners in instruction or have their experiences in the academic lab been investigated. This paper reports on an embedded multiple case study designed to investigate how chemistry graduate students in two independent and very different learning environments constructed their GTA self-image and what aspects contributed to this process. Participants in this study included 13 GTAs from an expository-based program and 11 GTAs from an inquiry-based program. Interviews, memos, training artifacts, laboratory manuals, and course syllabi were collected to generate case reports for each program. Findings suggest that GTAs’ construction of their self-image is shaped through the interaction of several factors: prior experiences, training, beliefs about the nature of knowledg...

For students who are not science majors, problem-based (PB) laboratories for first-year chemistry provide a more comprehensive experience than conventional expository ones. Implementing PB labs is reasonably easy, as the lab experiments may not need to change; what changes is the way the lab manual is set up and how the actual session is carried out. Rather than having a step-by-step procedure, the PB manual has general guidelines for the experiment, enabling students to develop experimental procedures of their own. During the lab session, a prelaboratory discussion is driven by the students’ input and clarifies the details for each individual procedure. In addition to the engagement of the students in the lab, the result of this approach has been the development of students who are capable of formulating hypotheses and, more importantly, sound experimental procedures to test these hypotheses.

Because of the rapidly changing nature of chemical instrumentation, students must be trained in how to learn and understand new instruments. Toward this end, students are asked to create small instrument manuals, or instrument profiles, for the major pieces of equipment studied during an instrumental analysis course. This writing-intensive process of creating instrument profiles requires that students understand the basics of each type of instrument and that they are able to compare the instrument to other instruments. With the use of block and schematic diagrams, the major components within an instrument are emphasized such that students can discover subtle differences between types of instruments. Students' ability to teach themselves new instruments is demonstrated at the end of the semester by creating an instrument profile for an instrument not specifically discussed during the course and by giving a short oral presentation to the class, providing everyone with brief exposure to many more technologies.

The intent of this project was focused on designing appealing and educationally effective "greener" laboratory manuals for traditional introductory chemistry courses. Targeted courses were traditional and homeschool first-year high school chemistry courses and regular and web-based college chemistry courses for those who are not science majors. The manuals include engaging experiments that reinforce the concepts taught in the particular introductory chemistry course while eliminating the need for hazardous waste disposal. A kit was developed with eScienceLabs for the Web-based and homeschool manuals. Supplementary teachers' manuals have also been produced that include answers to pre-lab and post-lab questions in text. These include a unified materials section with an index of supplies. A web site was developed to make the Green Chemistry Laboratory Manual prepared for a traditional high school course available to high school chemistry teachers.

Radical chemistry is a fundamental subject of undergraduate organic chemistry. While well described in organic textbooks, laboratory manuals rarely address this topic, focusing instead on syntheses using polar reactions. Herein, we describe a colorimetric assay using the persistent radical 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) to measure the antioxidant activity of common antioxidants in one (3 hour) lab period. While the laboratory procedures are designed for a second-year organic laboratory environment, minor modifications to either the experiment or the supplemental material would make this suitable for more or less advanced courses. This exercise is particularly appropriate for a course geared for nutrition or food science majors.

This experiment was designed to help students improve the critical thinking skills that are required to analyze and discuss the results of an organic chemistry experiment in an effective manner. The initial objective indicated in the prelab handout for this puzzle experiment was the synthesis of methyl 4-bromobenzoate using the Fischer esterification. Before beginning the experiment, however, students were informed that someone, acting as a "mole", might have sabotaged their experiment so that different results would be obtained. Their new objective was to perform the experiment, determine if any sabotage had occurred, and, if so, identify the changes that were made to the reagents as well as the person who was responsible for these modifications. Using the results from the experiment, spectroscopic data for the reagents provided by the instructor, and melting point values from chemical reference materials, students were able to complete this goal and become more adept at analyzing the outcome of a synthetic organic chemistry experiment. The Fischer esterification is found in many laboratory manuals and the series of carboxylic acids used for this procedure are safe and relatively inexpensive, so the experiment should be adaptable to most organic laboratory curricula.

At Washington University, fifteen Web-based tutorials were developed for our general chemistry laboratory curriculum. Each tutorial accompanies an experiment, wherein the key concepts of each tutorial complement the key concepts in the corresponding experiment. These tutorials are interdisciplinary applications that help make connections between the students' science courses and their everyday experience. In fall 2000 we performed an assessment to gauge the impact of the integration of these tutorials into the laboratory curriculum on students' attitudes about chemistry and their performance on a chemistry proficiency exam. The study used a pretest–posttest format with a control-group comparison. Washington University students had significantly more positive attitudes about chemistry than did the control students. Evidence is also presented that suggests that this curriculum or the measures used in evaluating student performance therein are beneficial to the performance of female students. These online tu...

Qualitative analysis in the general chemistry laboratory provides an excellent opportunity to help students make connections between ionic equilibrium topics covered in the lecture course and physical reality. Although laboratory manuals generally provide ample discussion of the equilibrium principles upon which the procedures are based, students' attention tends to be focused mostly on techniques, the reactions involved, and physical observations. A lack of understanding of the underlying principles often results in students being unable to make simple modifications to the procedure. This Mathcad document is intended to be used in a prelab activity for qualitative analysis experiments (based on modules ANAL364-366 of the Modular Laboratory Program in Chemistry, Palmyra, PA 17078), which are done toward the end of the general chemistry laboratory course at Nicholls State University. Mathcad is introduced at the beginning of the course and is routinely used throughout the semester for data analysis; handouts for these activities are available. The students are therefore quite competent in Mathcad by the time this activity is conducted. Students are given an incomplete Mathcad document (Qual6.mcd), which they complete as they explore the subject. An exemplary, completed document is available for instructors (Qual6a.mcd).

The purpose of this study was to determine through a historical review of the literature some of the most effective ways to teach manipulative skills in chemistry. I reviewed chemical education journals, laboratory manuals, early American chemistry textbooks, analytical chemistry texts, and science education textbooks and journals that have to do with instructional methods of teaching laboratory technique in the chemistry laboratory from the mid-1800s to the present. Both anecdotal and research-based findings suggest that while it may be difficult to choose the "best" method to improve students' manipulative skills, it is clear that videos can be useful media to promote skill acquisition. Using videotapes, videodiscs, CD-ROMs, and the Internet can have several advantages, such as the ability to be edited, copied, and viewed multiple times. The review of the literature also strongly suggests that some sort of mental preparation combined with physical practice can beneficially affect students' laboratory sk...

Many acid-base chemistry demonstrations and laboratory manuals include the "baking soda volcano". Others use the formation of calcium carbonate from calcium hydroxide and carbon dioxide in human breath. This demonstration uses principles from both as well as stoichiometry to answer the question "Does the order of mixing of reagents make a difference?" The demonstration is appropriate for introductory or high school chemistry, AP chemistry or general college chemistry.

Through a review of the literature, this paper asserts that four distinct styles of laboratory instruction have been utilized throughout the history of chemistry education: expository (traditional), inquiry, discovery, and problem-based. Although these instructional styles share many commonalities and oftentimes their labels are used interchangeably, each style is unique and can be distinguished from the others by a set of three descriptors: outcome, approach, and procedure.

Three experiments from each of ten lab manual were examined for evidence of higher-order cognitive activities. Analysis was based upon the six major cognitive categories of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The results of this study show that the overwhelming majority of general chemistry laboratory manuals provide tasks that require the use of only the lower-order cognitive skills: knowledge, comprehension, and application.

There are two interesting aspects to the report "Effect of a Laboratory Manual Design Incorporating Visual Information - Processing Aids on Student Learning and Attitudes" by Precharn Dechsri, Loretta Jones, and Henry Heikkinen, published in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching 1997, 34, 891­904. The authors describe a laboratory manual with changes that lead to significantly higher student scores on measures of laboratory-related achievement and psychomotor skills in addition to more favorable attitudes toward laboratory activities. They also provide a useful checklist and rubric for scoring laboratory skills.

The large number of biology majors and prehealth students enrolled in Organic Chemistry makes it desirable to have laboratories that involve biologically interesting molecules. Although many laboratory manuals contain sections on carbohydrate chemistry, the experiments are typically limited to esterification or hydrolysis reactions. A recent publication (Toshima, K.; Ishizuka, T.; Matsuo, G.; Nakata, M. Synlett. 1995, 306. ) on the glycosidation of glycals offered a different possibility.

136. There are three aspects of NaBH4 that are almost always presented incorrectly in texts.

This paper offers challenging work at a higher level of technique than students meet in elementary laboratory work.

Do secondary school laboratory texts reflect goals such as raising problems, developing inquiry skills, and providing opportunities for "discovery"?; a summary of the results of laboratory task ana...

Problems associated with overloading the working memory and possible solutions. From the "State-of-the-Art Symposium for Chemical Educators: Chemical Education for the 80's", held at the ACS meeting, St. Louis, 1984.

Unlike many organic chemistry labs, this experiment does not expose students to carcinogenics, nor does it smell bad.

In the past few years the authors have offered a course in physical chemistry laboratory for biologists. Two different approaches have been tried; detailed laboratory manuals are available upon request.

The author is critical of the cookbook approach used by most laboratory manuals and offers suggestions for providing greater opportunities for learning in the laboratory.

Many contemporary textbooks and laboratory manuals in organic chemistry either state explicitly or imply that bromine ass much faster to acetylenes than to olefins.

The authors have been using the product mixture obtained from the nitration of phenol to demonstrate the techniques of column and thin-layer chromatography with excellent results. The authors feel the experiment has several advantages over the column chromatographic experiments usually described in undergraduate laboratory manuals.