Authenticity in the chemistry teaching laboratory: Teaching and assessing student understanding of the scientific research process

This thesis studies the teaching and understanding of the scientific research process of students taking introductory organic chemistry laboratory at The Pennsylvania State University. A brief introduction about the importance of undergraduate research is given in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 describes the design of Chemistry 36B, biological organic chemistry laboratory, and how it differs from Chemistry 36, introductory organic chemistry laboratory. The design of Chemistry 36B incorporates assignments designed to teach the scientific research process. The main assignment used to teach the research process is a multi-week student run research project. Chapter 3 highlights the assessment of Chemistry 36B. Development of an assessment tool is discussed. Also highlighted is the how the assessment instrument was analyzed and coded. Chemistry 36B was assessed against a control section of Chemistry36 to determine if students gained a better understanding of the research process from taking Chemistry 36B. Chapter 4 summarizes the results of the assessment. It was determined that students who took Chemistry 36B gained a better overall understanding of the research process than their counterparts in Chemistry 36. Conclusions based on the results are highlighted in Chapter 5.