Teaching Inquiry-Driven Organic Chemistry Labs

1. Teaching Inquiry-Driven Organic Chemistry Labs Jerry Mohrig Carleton College Northfield, MN Introduction and Workshop Objectives Summer 2007

2. Workshop Objectives • Provide the participant hands-on experience with question-driven, guided-inquiry organic chemistry projects and experiments. • Allow the participant to evaluate what works well for guided-inquiry and design-based experiments and what are the practical constraints. • Help the participants learn how to invigorate their laboratory courses by using inquiry-driven experiments and projects. • Provide the participant experience with recasting a traditional experiment or project into a question-driven or design-based one. • Encourage sharing of positive and negative experiences by participants regarding their teaching of organic chemistry labs. • Explore whether graduate-student teaching assistants can provide competent supervision in the use of inquiry-driven organic chemistry labs and what training will be necessary to do this successfully.

3. Why Do We Teach Organic Chemistry Labs? What Are Our Goals?

4. Traditional Lab Teaching Goals • Teach students how to follow experimental directions 1) to verify what the lab manual says 2) to synthesize organic compounds • Teach modern laboratory techniques to students • Help students experience the material taught in our lectures and deepen their understanding of it

5. The Important Non-Traditional Goals of Laboratory Teaching • Teach students how to interpret experimental data and draw reasonable conclusions from them • Teach students how to design and carry out experimental procedures • Encourage students to ask questions and find answers • Allow students to experience first-hand the science of organic chemistry

6. Styles of Lab Teaching Traditional Verification Experiments Provide confirmation of knowledge that students have been asked to learn Make a white powder, prove it’s what you expect, and donate it to chemical waste, again and again – giving the word “cookbook” a bad name Inquiry Driven Guided-Inquiry or Discovery Experiments/Projects Question driven Outcome not known but the chemistry builds on what the students have studied - experimental results must be evaluated and conclusions drawn A procedure is often given Design-Based Experiments/Projects Adapting generic procedures to synthesize target compounds Students make decisions on the design of experimental procedures Open-Ended Inquiry Experiments/Projects Students generate their own procedures and investigate the outcomes

7. Traditional Grignard Synthesis Project

8. Design-Based Grignard ProjectPurpose: To design and carry out the Grignard synthesis of a secondary or tertiary alcohol from a simpler primary alcohol

10. The Chalcone Project

11. Chalcone Project Assessment • University of Florida, Gainesville — Tammy Davidson • Fall 2006 − 60 students and 4 graduate-student TAs • Spring 2007 − 550 students and 36 TAs • Student feedback was overwhelmingly positive • The project was seen as a real-world lab experience • It provided effective learning of spectroscopic • interpretation • Students felt that the post-lab discussion was quite valuable when the students and the graduate-student TA were adequately prepared and the TA was a good moderator • Student understanding depended on the quality of the teaching

12. TA Training and Feedback TA Training • Reading and discussion of the guided-inquiry approach in several meetings during the first week • TAs asked to talk about their past lab teaching and learning styles and to discuss teaching modifications to foster guided inquiry • Goals and teaching of each experiment discussed during the semester Feedback • TA time in lab richer and more rewarding • Students less pressured • Faculty have gone from skeptical to receptive

13. Some Student Comments • I learned: how to analyze IR, NMR, and GC-MS simultaneously to determine the actual product formed. that A + B doesn’t always equal C, and that’s OK. • I learned a lot from the post-lab discussion. I wish this was possible for each experiment. During the lab sessions, we were usually very busy trying to complete the experiment on time. It was nice to have a day where we could reflect and talk about what we learned. • I truly learned how chemists fit together a puzzle of data to make conclusions, and how hard it can be to do that. It was an incredible critical thinking exercise.

14. The Chalcone Post-Lab Discussion • After evaluating all of your data, each team will make a 10-minute presentation with visual aids, summarizing the data and your interpretation of it • A maximum of two teams will work with a specific chalcone • The discussion moderator will not give answers but instead will probe to see if the interpretations are consistent with the data • In a lab course, student notebooks/reports are due after the discussion. In the workshop, we will have a recap at the end • The post-lab discussion 1) is an important part of student learning in guided-inquiry projects 2) demonstrates the process of science

15. Necessary Background Materials Suitable written background materials must provide: • A clear well-defined question or purpose, stated up front • A well-written techniques book, which contains modern • spectroscopy as well as traditional lab techniques • Clear, student-friendly experimental directions or models • for developing them • Background material so that students can successfully • interpret their experimental data

16. Keys to Success in Using Inquiry-Driven LabsTeaching the Art of Data Interpretation and Experimental Design • Communication of the goals and methods to all concerned • Positive faculty participation • Appropriate TA training • Providing time for pre- and post-lab discussions • Availability of modern instrumentation • Availability of suitable written background materials