Investigation On Opening Research-like Experiment In Normal-university Instrumental Analysis Experiment Course

The chemical department of educational college/normal university is the base in our country for training middle school chemistry teachers. For meeting the increasing social demand on persons with integrated ability, especially in the innovative aspect, it is becoming more and more popular to train teachers good at research-like teaching. The opening of research-like experiments in universities has been paid great attention for its providing integrated ability to an educatee.In this thesis, questionnaire investigation has been carried out on the current status of instrumental analysis teaching and learning in several educational colleges and normal universities. The results revealed some problems, especially in the experimental aspect, implying the necessity to set research-like experiments in undergraduate education according to the social request for graduates from educational colleges and normal universities. Starting off with the definition of research-like experiment, the current status of research-like experiment teaching in domestic and overseas universities was introduced and analyzed. By taking contemporary educational psychology as the theoretical basis for practical teaching, in view of practical levels of students and existing teaching conditions, one research-like instrumental analysis experiment, Electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance study on the electrosynthesis and electrochemical properties of polyaniline, has been opened in 2003 autumn semester for undergraduates in grade 2001, College of Chemistry and Engineering of Hunan Normal University (HNU), and in grade 2001 majoring in Biotechnology, College of Life Science of HNU. The second research-like experiment, Complexometric titration and atomicabsorption spectrophotometry for determination of Ca and Mg in water samples, has been opened for members of the Chemistry and Society League, College of Chemistry and Engineering of HNU.Through experiment-process tracking, investigation and seminars before and after the experiments, it is found that the research-like experiments have favorably stirred students' enthusiasm, and students' ability in many aspects, such as basic experiment-operation skills, observation, problem analysis and solving, literatures' search and related utilization as well as written/oral presentation, has been significantly improved. Further on the basis of the experiments, related principles for research-like experiments were given and discussed, possible problems were analyzed in detail. This research may give some active suggestions on future experimental teaching.