Most chemistry labs are of the "cookbook" style, the labs are a series of steps to perform in the alloted time and not much thought goes into the performance. The other option is to give students a problem to solve and then give them free reign to design a lab. Many of the students have no idea where to begin the design phase of a lab and end up just looking up a cookbook lab and trying to make it work. The other problem with the free reign option is safety and logistics with the laboratory prep. Is it a safe lab? Do we have the chemicals, glassware, equipment? This is why so many of the colleges and universities go to prescriptive lab experiences.
Our solution is to have a prelab for each lab. The prelab consists of a writing assignment the student must perform before they get into the lab. This writing assignment will help them understand what they are trying to accomplish.
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Comments
Levi, The writing assignment is a great addition to learning in the lab. Great idea!
I like the "pre-metacognitive" aspect to this. I predict you will see an increase in lab quality outcomes, but am curious as to how you will assess this.
I might do this with the few labs I do in diff eq. Mine are so cookie cutter that there is no thought process. Can I steal this from you?
I do pre-lab homework assignments. The only piece of data I obtained was qualitative - students were much more aware of what they were doing in lab and were familiar with terms as I explained what they would be doing. It saved alot of lab time, if they had questions I indicated they needed to ask their neighbor and figure it out since they worked through the material in advance.
This seems like it would help students a lot in understand what you expect and what they are able to reasonably do. It also allows for more creativity I would assume! Do you compare grades of classes where you hadn't started this yet to the current class to assess if it's working? I bet student feedback would be very helpful also. Great idea!
It makes perfect sense! I've been implementing a pre-lab at other colleges at which I teach with great success. Not only does this process improve the quality of work by students, but it also helps students get the work done within the time constraints of a lab period.