CHED 1504 |
| Our objective is to create a chemistry laboratory model in which students learn standard techniques through experiences that widen their perspective on the scholarship of teaching, leadership, and research. The designed course addresses the persistent challenge of how to emulate an authentic research laboratory environment for hundreds of first-term, first-year students. Our model for a first term honors organic laboratory (N=100) features students who (1) learn and then teach laboratory techniques to others, (2) edit and self-correct laboratory record-keeping, and (3) design their own questions and carry out their own investigations. In the culminating four-week project students use these skills in a highly collaborative research environment while investigating an original research problem, such as optimizing reaction conditions to improve an existing reaction, where the outcome is truly unknown. Details of student activities, an analysis of assessment data, and future directions based on three iterations of the course will be discussed. |
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Keeping it Real: Inquiry Instruction and the Chemistry Laboratory
1:30 PM-4:05 PM, Tuesday, April 8, 2008 Hilton New Orleans Riverside -- Oak Alley, Oral
Division of Chemical Education |