The Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology at the University of New Mexico has begun a major course reform in undergraduate curriculum in 2012. We started with the general chemistry sequence, converting our classroom into active learning environments. This effort has shown improvement on student’s concept gains over the original passive learning approach. Borrowing the experience from general chemistry reform, we extended our effort to the advanced course – instrumental analysis. Based on social constructivism, knowledge is constructed through social interaction and is a shared rather than an individual experience. We recognized lecture is not the best format for delivering such an experience, and therefore took a collaborative learning approach in our classroom. We also considered the situated learning theory to provide connection of laboratory projects to real world problems students identify. Students are motivated to learn the principles of each instrument because of their practical needs of carrying out the laboratory projects. This presentation will describe the basic principles of our active-learning approach, lecture activities, laboratory activities, formative and summative assessments, and some preliminary data from student’s performance. We will also discuss some practical issues related to the implementation of the new approach without requiring a major change of the laboratory setup.

Active learning in undergraduate instrumental analysis

249th National Meeting (2015)

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