Transcript Slide 1

GENERAL CHEMISTRY
LABORATORY
CURRICULUM SURVEY
Steven L Brown
General Chemistry Lab Manager
& Adjunct Lecturer
Department of Chemistry
University of Arizona
Description
A survey of general chemistry laboratory programs. The
questions are designed to solicit information about the
curriculum currently being offered in all post-secondary
chemistry programs. The intent is to identify major trends
and to share this information with those responsible for
developing and maintaining general chemistry laboratory
programs.
The survey consists of 40 multiple choice questions and one
essay question.
Who Participated (so far)?
76 Colleges and Universities from across the US
• 56 Public State Universities
• 8 Private Universities
• 12 Colleges
• Average enrollment: 14,633
•http://quiz2.chem.arizona.edu/labsurvey/
Areas Covered
I
Structure
II
Determining Experiments
III
Current Content
IV
Cooperative Learning
IV
Scientific Writing
V
Educational Support Materials
VI
Other (funding, ideas, computer notebooks,
assessment)
Part I: STRUCTURE.
Seven questions about the relationship
of lab to lecture and who does what
in the lab portion of the course.
Lecture/lab one couse or two. Still about
50/50
 For your largest science and engineering
lab course, how many hours per week
are students in lab?
3.2
 For your largest science and engineering
lab course, on average, how many hours
per week do students spend outside of
the lab on lab assignments? 2.6

Who does
what.
Primary
responsible
party in the
lab
Faculty
TAs
Staff
56%
44%
0
Prepares
reagents &
materials
5%
24%
71%
Maintain
Equipment
20%
5%
75%
Part II: DETERMINING
EXPERIMENTS
Eight questions regarding who decides what
experiments are performed and how they are
presented to students.
Who decides which experiments are performed
and what is taught?

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
The Faculty as a whole
8%
A subgroup of the faculty (e.g. a curriculum
committee)
20 %
The person(s) responsible for the course 72 %
Where do your experiments come from?



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
Original content written by someone in the
department.
64 %
Adoption of a nationally pub. lab manual. 9 %
Prewritten labs from a publisher in a customassembled lab manual.
7%
Copied or borrowed from other sources. 0
Mixture of above.
20 %
“The source or sources of the liberal
studies course exercises is lost.”
How are the experiments presented to
students?



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
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A nationally published lab manual.
9%
A custom published lab manual using experiments
provided by the publisher.
5%
A custom published lab manual using locally generated
experiments.
36 %
Local reproduction sold locally.
29 %
Local reproduction provided free to students (including
posting to websites).
8%
Mixture of above
13 %
14. How frequently are experiments
modified? For a typical 2-semester sequence,
what fraction of the experiments are modified in
some way in an average year?





more than 50%
25 - 50%
10 - 25%
less than 10%, but greater than 0
None
8%
18 %
46 %
26 %
1%
Part III: CURRENT CONTENT.
Three questions regarding curriculum.
Techniques taught
100% Graphing of laboratory measurements
99% Titration, acid/base.
95% Absorption spectroscopy using the Beer-Lambert law.
86% Calorimetry
86% Gas law determination or application
82% Qualitative Analysis
70% Determination of density
53% Molecular modeling
50% Emission spectroscopy
46% Titration, oxidation-reduction.
36% Paper chromatography
28% Titration, complexometric.
20% Thin layer chromatography
16% Titration, precipitation
Old Favorites
74% Qualitative analysis of cations in solution.
51% Determination of a MW using the gas law.
43% Law of constant composition
36% Dehydration of a hydrated salt.
33% Determination of hydrogen emission lines.
28% Paper chromatography of food dyes.
25% Acid/base titration of antacids.
22% EDTA titration for water hardness.
18% Acid/base titration of aspirin tablets.
14% Unit cell models and calculations.
8% Paper chromatography of amino acids.
Instructional approach:
Some number
given
Average of
responses
% Skill Building/Verification
(Students are provided highly
structured directions to follow to
produce expected outcomes)
92%
74%
% Guided (Students are allowed
some choices regarding data
collection and observation for
purpose of testing fit to
hypothesis)
79%
28%
% Open Inquiry (students design
experiments to answer questions)
46%
18%
Part IV: COOPERATIVE LEARNING.
Three questions about the use of group work in lab.
Working in the Lab
Students work individually in lab on their
own experiments. Collaboration is
normally discouraged.
Students work in groups, but each student
has a well defined role and individual
responsibilities to the group.
Students work in groups with no individually
defined roles. Students decide for
themselves who will do what.
A mixture of individual and group work
19%
4%
60%
17%
Doing Assignments
Students do their own assignments and
collaboration is discouraged.
20%
Students are encouraged to collaborate,
but submit individual assignments.
67%
Students prepare group assignments, but
have clearly defined roles with individual
responsibilities to the group.
3%
Students prepare group assignments with
no individually defined responsibilities
7%
Mixture of the above
4%
Grading students' work
No collaboration. Students do their own
work and are graded individually.
29%
Students are encouraged to collaborate,
but all grading is on an individual basis.
55%
For some assignments the group received
a common grade, for others the grading in
on an individual basis.
12%
Students are graded in groups with all
students in the group receiving the same
grade.
4%
'They all receive the same grade if they allocate
participation points equally. They must divy up to
+/-10 points, the total of which must add up to
zero. The total is adjusted up or down based upon
agreed upon points. They sign off on participation
points. If a person gets a -10 from the group
grade, the TA will inform that person that he/she is
to produce his/her own report until the group
accepts them back into the group for the report.
They can still participate as a member of the group
during the lab. This has been working marginally.
(the other) Part IV: SCIENTIFIC WRITING.
Six questions on the development of scientific writing skills.
Do you require your students to keep
a lab notebook?
71 % Yes 29 % No
If your students are required to keep
a notebook, how is it evaluated?
No evaluation
The instructor grades the notebook in class
20%
6%
The notebook is submitted to the instructor who grades it
22%
Copies of the notebook entries are submitted for
evaluation.
48%
Copies of the notebook entries are submitted, but the
original notebook is evaluated.
4%
Teaching Writing
teaching
lab
notebook
use
teaching
technical
writing
One of the highest priorities
22%
25%
Somewhat important
53%
46%
Neutral
11%
16%
Low priority
9%
12%
Not important at all.
5%
1%
Level of Writing
No writing required
0%
Students fill in data tables and worksheets
consisting of short, directed questions.
45%
Students write a report and answer
questions that serve as a discussion.
26%
Students write a report and generate their
own discussion.
29%
Writing support
In recent years a number of mechanisms to support
and augment the teaching of scientific writing have
been tried. Which of the following do you employ
to help students develop their scientific writing
skills? Please select all that apply.
Students write reports employing standard journal
31
formats.
Students submit drafts of their reports and receive
5
feedback before generating the final report.
3 The CPR web-based writing program is employed.
“Science Writing Heuristic”
“Nothing really. This is something that I must start to work hard on to benefit
my students.”
Part V: EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT
MATERIALS.
Seven questions about various materials used to support
laboratory instruction.
None used.
25%
Blackboard®
26%
WebCT®
16%
Desire 2 Learn®
Course, department or school web site
alone.
1%
20%
Other. (MCWeb, Angel, educator, Moodle,
Webassign, DISCUS) and mixture
12%
Please indicate which computer interface for data
collection, if any, your students use in your labs.
No interface used
Labview
Labworks
Pasco
Measurenet
Vernier
MicroLab
Mixture.
46%
1%
4%
4%
4%
31%
3%
7%
Do you require your students to use a data analysis tool to
manipulate the measurements they make in lab? If so,
which of the following? (sums to more than 100% due to
multiple responses.)
No tool required.
Tools required, but students are free to
choose.
Excel® or other equivalent spreadsheet
program.
Access® or other equivalent database
program.
14%
Scientific or graphing calculator.
Other specific program. Please name.
20%
13%
Logger Pro
12%
70%
1%
7%
Part VI: OTHER.
Six random questions on a variety of topics.
Please estimate the out-of-pocket
expenses for a student in your lab
courses for each of the following (for a
full year course).
#
lab manual.
69
$
29.10
lab fees (used by department for course
expenses).
45
$
65.50
equipment purchase/rental.
2
$
7.50
lab supplies such as goggles, apron,
notebook, etc.
61
$
16.90
other expenses. Please briefly describe.
11
$
14.70
Average of
responses
Where do you get new ideas for chemistry
lab education? (ranked)
1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th
Source
11
11
9
15
16
conferences, etc.
19
19
19
7
6
journals e.g. JChemEd.
21
23
9
10
8
informal peer interactions.
6
7
10
16
20
publishers.
17
10
18
11
9
I make them up myself.
2
3
2
3
3
other sources.
The advent of the computer brought visions of a paperless
work environment. Such things as notebook computers
and electronic data capture hope to replace the current
hand-written laboratory notebook. Which of the following
statements comes closest to your view on the future of the
hand-written laboratory notebook over the next ten years.
I expect no significant change in the use of
laboratory notebooks.
36%
Notebooks will continue to be used to record
conditions and observations, but will be used less
and less to record numerical data.
60%
The handwritten lab notebook is doomed to be
replaced with one or more computer-based tools.
4%
Labs can be used to teach students how chemical
knowledge is acquired in the lab. They can also be used
to develop the student's lab skills. And they can be used
to develop understanding of concepts presented in
lecture. Please estimate the relative emphasis placed
on these three objectives as currently practiced in your
program. (Average of reported percentages.)
to teach students how chemical knowledge is
acquired in the lab
26.6
to develop the student's lab skills.
34.7
to develop understanding of concepts presented
in lecture.
38.4
What kind of data do you use to determine the
success of your laboratory classes? (Sum
exceeds 100 due to multiple responses).
Course evaluations submitted by students.
80%
Student test outcomes.
53%
Student satisfaction surveys.
28%
Student interviews.
12%
Instructor interviews or surveys.
25%
No formal method is employed to determine
success.
12%
Briefly describe the trend(s) that you believe will
most significantly change the way your laboratory
program will be run in the next 3-5 years.
No Answer
chemcial safety issues
11
5
guided inquiry
10
technology
18
budgets
2
instrumentation
4
• We
also just like to change things up. It keeps the
faculty fresh.
• The shift from chemistry to biochemistry as the
"central science“
• We are just starting a program to develop prelab
videos
• The basic idea of general chemistry is basic
chemistry, and most automation automates out
precisely what we want to teach
• We need to keep students interested and engaged
while providing the lab skills their career paths
expect them to have
• We chemical educators face a challenge of not
bowing to student pressure to make things easy
and fun.
• Student preparation in high school is getting
poorer by the year. At some point, we either have
to fail more people, or dumb down the material. I
wish neither were necessary.
• More online course management.
More computer molecular modeling.
• EPA, RICRA, etc. regulations on waste
management, safety, etc. will force us to NOT offer
wet general chemistry laboratories, we will have to
use computer simulations.
Acknowledgements
Funding for this survey has been provided
by Hayden-McNeil Publishing, Inc.
 The Department of Chemistry, University
of Arizona.
 The 76 individuals who took the time to
complete the survey.
