Modernizing Laboratory Teaching in 2nd Year Chemistry laboratories

Recent curriculum changes in the Department of Chemistry have focused on improving the learning experience in 2nd year synthetic and analytical laboratories. The delivery and assessment of three of our teaching laboratories (analytical and synthetic) have changed dramatically to include active learning elements such as oral reports and guided-inquiry projects. Oral reports allow students to hone-in their oral communication skills while receiving instantaneous feedback on misconceptions about experiments. In guided-inquiry projects, students must research the background information and design experimental procedures to answer predetermined research questions. This talk will focus on the changes to the delivery and assessment of analytical laboratories, and will discuss changes and future directions of our synthetic teaching laboratories.