| Reform agendas for practice in undergraduate chemistry are moving curriculum beyond traditional behaviorist teaching strategies to include constructivist approaches, for extending student learning beyond simple mastery of chemistry content (Bunce & Robinson, 1997; Lagowski, 1998; Herron & Nurrenburn, 1999). Yet implementing new strategies requires assessment of their benefit to learning. This study was undertaken to provide a formal and formative evaluation of the curricula in General and Organic chemistry laboratory courses, which are structured with both Traditional expository lab exercises, and a cooperative inquiry exercise called the Open Ended Project. Using a mixed-methodological case study framework, the primary goal of the research was to determine how the inclusion of these teaching strategies impacts student learning in the areas of Academic Achievement and Affective Learning from the perspective of the students enrolled in these lab classes.; The findings suggest that the current curriculum structure of including both Traditional Instruction and the Open Ended Project does address students' Academic Achievement and Affective Learning. However, students perceived that these curriculum components each contributed differently to their learning. For Academic Achievement, Traditional Experiments and the Project had a positive impact on students' operational skills, such as how to use and choose lab techniques for performing or designing experiments, as well as their conceptual learning, such as understanding concepts, and relating those concepts during data analysis. Yet for Affective Learning, such as students' sense of confidence, accomplishment, and engagement, the Project, which has a cooperative learning element, had a positive impact on student learning, while Traditional Experiments, which do not have a cooperative learning element, had a moderate negative impact. The findings point to Cooperative Learning as the key element, which makes the positive contribution to students' Affective Learning. Also, in contrast to current reform trends for minimizing Traditional Instruction, a curriculum which includes both cooperative inquiry exercises, and traditional experiments (which incorporate some cooperative interaction with other students), is more in line with students' vision of a laboratory course that contributes positively to their Academic Achievement and Affective Learning. |
