Traditionally, chemistry laboratory courses have involved “cookbook” lab experiments, in which the students conduct a series of experiments (which may or may not be interconnected. In such courses, entire procedures are provided for every experiment, without any independent research required of the students. Recently, the second-semester organic chemistry laboratory curriculum at a medium-sized open-access public institution in the southeastern United States has been revised to replace this traditional experience with a semester-long project in which students synthesize a sulfa drug. Due to the shift in focus toward research-related skills and application of synthesis knowledge, we hypothesized that students conducting the synthesis project would experience greater cognitive and affective gains than students engaged in the traditional laboratory experiments. Comparisons between students in the two curricula on multiple cognitive and affective measures will be discussed, along with implications for future revisions to the synthesis project.<br/>

Evaluating the cognitive and affective impacts of a synthesis research project in a second-semester organic chemistry laboratory

255th National Meeting (2018)

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