Incorporation of Instrumentation into an Innovative Introductory Chemistry Laboratory Curriculum

化学(12)我们的普通化学课程最近的变化是为了使学生在课堂和实验室中从定量的、算法的问题解决转向基于概念的问题解决。以学生为中心的项目补充了标准的讲课形式，这些项目在课堂期间得到解决。为了与课程课堂部分的这些变化相一致，实验室部分被完全改造为包括基于发现的实验，在这些实验中，学生通过练习来学习，帮助他们自己发现重要的科学原理。学生首先在这种类型的实验室环境中学习一个概念，然后他们应用所学的知识来解决现实生活中感兴趣的问题。由其他人开发并在化学教育文献中报道的实验正在被改编，以创造这种新的实验室体验。这个项目通过让学生接触到比以前的实验课程中更多的工具来帮助实现这些目标。此外，学生在更大程度上使用计算机进行分子建模和数据处理。在修订课程和实验室格式的同时，该项目还纳入了其他仪器，包括UV-Vis光谱仪、一台原子吸附光谱仪、一台红外光谱仪和两台气相色谱仪，以及计算机和软件。

Chemistry (12) Recent changes in our General Chemistry curriculum are designed to move students away from quantitative, algorithmic problem solving to concept-based problem solving, both in the classroom and the laboratory. The standard lecture format has been supplemented by student-oriented projects which are solved during the classroom period. To coincide with these changes in the classroom part of the course, the laboratory portion has been totally revamped to include discovery-based experiments, in which students learn by performing exercises that help them discover important scientific principles on their own. The students first learn about a concept in this type of laboratory setting, and they then apply their acquired knowledge to solve a problem of interest in real life. Experiments developed by others and reported in the chemical education literature are being adapted to create this new laboratory experience. This project is helping to accomplish these goals by exposing the students to more instrumentation than in the previous laboratory curriculum. In addition, students are using computers to a greater extent, both for molecular modeling as well as data manipulation. In conjunction with the revised course and laboratory format, this project is also incorporating additional instrumentation, including UV-Vis spectrometers, an atomic adsorption spectrometer, an IR spectrometer, and two gas chromatographs, along with computers and software.