While no chemist can imagine teaching chemistry without the undergraduate chemistry laboratory, the role of the laboratory in student learning has largely remained one of confirmation of principles presented in lecture rather than exploration and concept development for far too many students. The work of Melanie Cooper and her Cooperative Learning laboratories known as SuperChem Lab were groundbreaking in challenging this paradigm. The challenge of measuring student learning in the undergraduate chemistry laboratory remains problematic. Novak's Theory of Meaningful Learning states that the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains must be integrated in order for meaningful learning to occur. While the psychomotor domain is obviously integral to the undergraduate chemistry laboratory, the extent to which cognitive and affective processing are present for students is unknown. For meaningful learning to occur, students must actively integrate both the cognitive domain and the affective domain into the doing of their laboratory work. The Meaningful Learning in the Laboratory Inventory (MLILI) was designed to measure students' cognitive and affective expectations and experiences within the context of conducting experiments in the undergraduate chemistry laboratory. MLILI was pilot tested with general, organic, and physical chemistry students at both a large research university and a liberal arts university. The MLILI was significantly revised on the basis of exploratory factor analysis and the theoretical lens of meaning learning. A second round of data was collected in fall 2013 from general chemistry and organic chemistry students. An analysis of student expectations as compared with their experiences during laboratory learning as measured by the revised MLILI will be presented.

Measuring student perceptions of meaningful learning in the undergraduate chemistry laboratory

247th National Meeting (2014)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.