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The Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) laboratory instruction approach has been used successfully over a decade to engage students in laboratory activities. SWH-based instruction emphasizes knowledge construction through individual writing and reflection, and collaborative learning as a group. In the SWH approach, writing is a core component of learning. Previous studies on the SWH approach have reported effective implementation of the SWH approach leads to an improvement in overall student academic performance and content knowledge. Using a rubric developed by Maria Oliver-Hoyo, we compared the critical thinking (CT) skills of students across three groups, based on their written laboratory reports for various traits of CT, and the cognitive skills embedded in the rubric. Participants in this study were first-year general chemistry students who received traditional laboratory instruction, first-year general chemistry students who were instructed using the SWH approach, and fourth-year chemistry students who received traditional laboratory instruction. First-year students and fourth-year chemistry students who received traditional laboratory instruction scored statistically significantly lower on various CT traits, suggesting the SWH-based laboratory instruction is valuable in promoting CT thinking skills of students.

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A two-semester longitudinal study investigated the effects of a laboratory instructional strategy—the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH)—on improving student academic performance in the lecture portion of the course. The SWH approach helps students do inquiry science laboratory work by structuring the laboratory notebook in a format that guides students to answer directed questions instead of using a traditional laboratory report. In this approach, students must make a claim (inference) about what was learned through the laboratory experiment and provide evidence to support that claim. Then, through reflection, students continue to negotiate meaning from the experiment(s) they conducted. Successfully implementing the SWH requires a student-centered learning environment. In this study, the instructors were rated on how well they implemented the SWH approach and inquiry. The hypothesis under investigation was that the more proficiently an instructor engages students to do collaborative inquiry and the SWH approach, the more effectively students learn. The results of this study indicate that students whose laboratory instructor proficiently implements the SWH approach earn more total points in the lecture portion of the course compared to students who have a laboratory instructor who does not fully implement the SWH approach. The data also show that the SWH approach helps students entering the course with low chemistry content knowledge to succeed in the course compared to students who were not taught using the SWH approach.

This communication presents a partial historical summary of some of Iowa State University’s Chemistry Department teaching response to the shift to online course delivery caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The observations reflect discussions between and informal surveys of an instructor cohort that impacted roughly 1200 undergraduate students. These students were enrolled in general chemistry I, organic chemistry II, inorganic chemistry, quantum mechanics, and chemistry for non-physical-science majors. The paper highlights the challenges faced and describes how faculty and students met them.