A recent and ongoing initiative within the Department of Chemistry at Trent University is the development and incorporation of problem-based and inquiry-based experiments into our laboratory curriculum across the first three years of undergraduate study. This work has been driven by a recent teaching fellowship grant awarded by Trent University.<br/>In the Fall 2021 semester, a new laboratory experiment incorporating inquiry-based learning was implemented into CHEM 3410H: Spectroscopy and Spectrophotometry. The goal of the experiment was to provide students with experience in quantitative analysis by internal standard calibration using both gravimetric and volumetric approaches. Specifically, students were tasked at the outset of the experiment with determining a suitable internal standard for the analysis of unknown sodium benzoate and acetophenone samples. This experiment was framed from the perspective of quality control standards in foods and consumer product industries and designed to make use of our undergraduate ATR-FT-IR instrument and complement the theoretical information being discussed within the lecture component of the course. <br/>The goal of this presentation will be to discuss the overall experience in implementing this newly developed experiment into our laboratory curriculum as well as providing feedback from students within the course about whether or not they believe the laboratory experiment allowed them to achieve the intended learning goals, what they believe was the most impactful learning they achieved through completion of this experiment, and what challenges or frustrations they encountered. Our hope is to utilize these responses to suggest improvements for the pedagogical design of this new laboratory experiment.

Incorporating inquiry-based experimentation into an undergraduate spectroscopy laboratory

Fall 2022 abstracts, posters, and presentations will launch in mid-September.

ACS Fall 2022

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