Investigators from Northern Kentucky University and California State University Fullerton are designing a series of integrated laboratory activities that scaffold students' development of cognitive skills to support conceptual understanding in general chemistry. The laboratory activities target cognitive skills specific to inquiry-based learning in the laboratory, and target the abilities of students to transform concepts between macroscopic, particulate and symbolic representations. The results of the research will provide practical guidance on the nature and degree of scaffolding necessary for development of cognitive skills and the nexus between conceptual learning and mental model development. Laboratory activities are being developed using a Learning Continuum Framework, which describes a developmental progression of cognitive and conceptual learning objectives scaffolded across the three inquiry approaches of structured, guided and open. Implementation of the laboratory activities is being studied at both higher education institutions in order to include students with diverse backgrounds, on the rationale that this increases the generalizability and transferability of the study's findings. The laboratory instructional materials focus on four concept domains in first-term general chemistry: physical and chemical change, stoichiometry, solutions, and gases. To date we have developed a structured inquiry activities in the areas of physical-chemical change, stoichiometry and gas laws that were implemented during the spring 2013 semester. Data collection and analysis is ongoing. Preliminary results from the physical-chemical change and stoichiometry activities will be presented.

C<sub>3</sub>Lab: An integrated cognitive and conceptual curriculum for the general chemistry laboratory

246th National Meeting (2013)

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C3Lab: An integrated cognitive and conceptual curriculum for the general chemistry laboratory

C₃Lab: An integrated cognitive and conceptual curriculum for the general chemistry laboratory