Chemical Education:  Teaching Guided-Inquiry Organic Chemistry Labs

Jerry R. Mohrig (Carleton College),   Christina Noring Hammond (Vassar College),   and Jhong Kim (University of California at Irvine)

Many organic chemistry laboratory teachers realize that traditional cookbook verification labs do not produce effective student learning.  Most lab manuals give the results to be expected and never provide students with opportunities to critically evaluate their experimental data.  With traditional organic labs students do not experience the process of organic chemistry except to learn techniques and simple synthetic methodology.  The challenge is to discover what we can substitute for traditional experiments within the practical constraints of the teaching lab, especially in large courses where teaching assistants have primary responsibility for the teaching.

The workshop organizers have developed a number of question-driven, guided-inquiry experiments and projects to invigorate the organic lab, where students have the opportunity to answer real questions by interpreting their experimental results and drawing reasonable conclusions from them.  The conclusions are based on their data, such as melting point, TLC, GC, and spectroscopy.  Each participant will get hands-on experience with question-driven experiments and projects, both in the laboratory and by recasting traditional labs into guided-inquiry and designed-based experiments.  Participants will be invited to submit a favorite traditional experiment for recasting and five will be recast by small groups of participants.  There will be ample time for discussion of the results and the practical constraints that must be overcome in the implementation of guided-inquiry experiments.  Participants will gain sufficient experience to be able to incorporate inquiry-driven experiments into their lab courses.

The workshop will also consider the role and training of laboratory TAs when using guided-inquiry experiments and projects.  The workshop materials and activities will address how a structured approach to inquiry-driven experiments can support effective learning for both undergraduate students and graduate-student TAs.