Enhancing Students' Laboratory Experiences in Undergraduate Chemistry

Most traditional laboratory programs accompanying small or large introductory lecture sections require students to do some form of prelaboratory exercise. These exercises, if employed properly, can reduce the information load for the student before he or she enters the laboratory. This will likely help students to connect to prior knowledge and bridge any gaps between laboratory and lecture during the actual lab period. For all these results to transpire, prelaboratory exercises need to be implemented well. Therefore, the objective of the study was to implement various prelaboratory exercises that employed technology to various degrees in order to understand how students viewed the curricular materials as supporting their meaningful learning. The three experiences that were employed included students reading a lab procedure with pictures embedded within it, watching a video for the experiment, or being involved in a technical rehearsal. The results showed that students appreciated the support provided by the prelaboratory experiences in various domains of learning to various degrees. The limitations of the study and implications regarding the implementation of various prelaboratory activities to enhance students' chemistry learning in the three learning domains are discussed. © 2019 American Chemical Society.