At schools with a high non-traditional student population, the basic arithmetic involved in freshman chemistry is often a major source of frustration and confusion as students try to recall information from math courses they took five or more years before. This often leads to students doing poorly in the course as they try to learn chemistry calculations while not fully understanding the arithmetic involved. Presented here is a lab redesign for a non-majors chemistry course that incorporates math primers with the pre-lab materials to help students get a step-by-step guide on how to answer problems that are present in both lecture and lab. A comparison and assessment of these new labs as compared to the previously used, traditional format labs is included.

Reaching the non-traditional student population via math primers in a freshman chemistry lab course

245th National Meeting (2013)

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