What Faculty Interviews Reveal about Meaningful Learning in the Undergraduate Chemistry Laboratory

2013 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacey Lowery Bretz ◽  
Michael Fay ◽  
Laura B. Bruck ◽  
Marcy H. Towns
2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelli R. Galloway ◽  
Stacey Lowery Bretz

A series of quantitative studies investigated undergraduate students' perceptions of their cognitive and affective learning in the undergraduate chemistry laboratory. To explore these quantitative findings, a qualitative research protocol was developed to characterize student learning in the undergraduate chemistry laboratory. Students (N= 13) were observed and video recorded while performing one of their assigned laboratory experiments. Each student wore an action camera as well as a lapel microphone attached to a voice recorder to capture the experiment from the students' perspective. A tripod camera was also placed unobtrusively in the lab to record the student from a third person perspective. Students were interviewed within 48 hours of their video recording and asked to identify specific learning experiences in their laboratory experiment. The self-selected video episodes were shown to the students, and they were asked to describe what they were doing and why they were doing it. The students' descriptions were analyzed using Novak's theory of meaningful learning to characterize their cognitive and affective experiences. The self-identified learning experiences were dominated by descriptions of psychomotor learning with few students discussing cognitive experiences. The limited connections between cognitive and affective experiences revealed missed opportunities for meaningful learning.


Author(s):  
Trisha Gupte ◽  
Field M. Watts ◽  
Jennifer A. Schmidt-McCormack ◽  
Ina Zaimi ◽  
Anne Ruggles Gere ◽  
...  

Teaching organic chemistry requires supporting learning strategies that meaningfully engage students with the challenging concepts and advanced problem-solving skills needed to be successful. Such meaningful learning experiences should encourage students to actively choose to incorporate new concepts into their existing knowledge frameworks by appealing to the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains of learning. This study provides a qualitative analysis of students’ meaningful learning experiences after completing three Writing-to-Learn (WTL) assignments in an organic chemistry laboratory course. The assignments were designed to appeal to the three domains necessary for a meaningful learning experience, and this research seeks to understand if and how the WTL assignments promoted students’ meaningful learning. The primary data collected were the students’ responses to open-ended feedback surveys conducted after each assignment. These responses were qualitatively analyzed to identify themes across students’ experiences about their meaningful learning. The feedback survey analysis was triangulated with interviews conducted after each assignment. The results identify how the assignments connected to students’ existing knowledge from other courses and indicate that assignment components such as authentic contexts, clear expectations, and peer review supported students’ meaningful learning experiences. These results inform how assignment design can influence students’ learning experiences and suggest implications for how to support students’ meaningful learning of organic chemistry through writing.


Daxue Huaxue ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
pp. 2109118-0
Author(s):  
Lipeng Zhou ◽  
Xubo Zhao ◽  
Jinshuai Song ◽  
Pu Liu ◽  
Xiaomei Yang ◽  
...  

Daxue Huaxue ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 88-93
Author(s):  
Shuying ZHU ◽  
◽  
Yi LI ◽  
Shuting WU ◽  
Yanqiong SUN ◽  
...  

1998 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn A. Thomasson ◽  
Sheila Lofthus-Herschman ◽  
Michelle Humbert ◽  
Norman Kulevsky

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