Laboratory Skills Assignments as a Teaching Tool to Develop Undergraduate Chemistry Students’ Conceptual Understanding of Practical Laboratory Skills

Abstract

Laboratory skills assignments were developed as a novel approach to providing students with the opportunity to engage in hands-on laboratory skills development outside of the lab during the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, the assignments were implemented within a second-year forensic chemistry course of 48 students and redesigned and modified to be implemented within a large in-person second-year analytical chemistry course of 208 students as a complement to the laboratory experiments. Five laboratory skills were chosen to coincide with those used within the laboratory experiments of the course: pipetting, quantitative transfer, serial dilutions, buret use within titrations, and weightby-difference mass measurements. Each skills assignment consisted of two videos demonstrating the selected skill: one in which the skill was performed properly and one in which deliberate errors have been included. For each skills assignment, students were tasked with distinguishing between the two videos along with identifying the included errors and the consequences each error would have on either the accuracy and reproducibility of the collected data or the safety of the experimental procedure. Student feedback on the skills assignments is also reported.

Video-Supported Case Study for Course Review in Quantitative Instrumental Element Analysis

“…On the other hand, visible blunders of inappropriate use of equipment or harmless violations of safety rules could be intentionally included in a video and be a first instance of class discussion (“ Find the mistake(s). ”), − but should subsequently be noted as such.…”

Identificat’ions: A Battle Card Game to Learn Chemical Tests and Practice Observation and Reasoning

“…Most students have troubles acknowledging the observation “nothing happens” and deducing a negative outcome of the test . In the game, when a player does not have the analyzed analyte within their cards and the observation given by the flipped card cannot be made, the attacking player has to give their detection reagent card away: a negative outcome for a test does not stop the game as the observation “nothing happens” still gives information to chemists.…”

10 Guiding principles for learning in the laboratory

“…As well as being a means of assessment, the use of these approaches repeatedly results in significant improvement in laboratory skills (Jacobsen, 2023), that is to say the assessment is for learning, not just of learning. Other novel approaches on this theme include asking students to identify mistakes in a technique in videos provided (Accettone et al, 2023). Rubrics have also been used to assess critical thinking and information processing skills in various chemistry laboratory settings, with reported benefits of both providing a means to assess broader outcomes relating to critical thinking, as well as facilitating student awareness of the assessment regime to the extent that they can self-grade and reflect on own progress (Reynders et al, 2020).…”