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 many students. Hofstein and Lunetta's seminal publications in 1982 and 2004 decried the sparse evidence that laboratory experiences help students learn.  Still today, 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 <i>and</i> the affective domain into the <i>doing</i> of their laboratory work. The Meaningful Learning in the Laboratory Instrument (MLLI) was designed to measure students' cognitive and affective expectations and experiences within the context of conducting experiments in the undergraduate chemistry laboratory. MLLI data has been collected in  multiple studies: 1) general chemistry (GC) and organic chemistry (OC) students pre-post for the first semester of laboratory, 2) a national cross-sectional study for GC and OC laboratory students, and 3) a two-year longitudinal study. An analysis of student expectations as compared with their experiences during laboratory learning as measured by the MLLI will be presented.

Measuring meaningful learning in the undergraduate chemistry laboratory

251st National Meeting (2016)

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