Environmental Chemistry in the General Chemistry Laboratory, Part II

This is the second of two closely-related articles describing an innovative approach to teaching first-year chemistry. The first article provides details of the methods for teaching the course, and this article discusses the student evaluation data obtained for the project. The goals of the project were threefold: (1) to increase students interest in science early in their academic careers, particularly women and minority students; (2) to raise students awareness of the connections between chemistry and real-life issues; and (3) to engender a more sophisticated view of science among students. To achieve these goals, we created a module-based laboratory curriculum in which each module is centered on a specific environmental question that the students must answer. This article focuses on the project¹s evaluation, which compares the performance and attitudes of students in the environmental laboratory to those in a traditional one. Classroom performance results indicate that although the students in the environmental laboratory entered the class less prepared than the students in the regular laboratory, both groups performed equally well at the end of the chemistry course. Students in the environmental group ranked the laboratory significantly higher on a department evaluation survey than students in the regular group, indicating their heightened satisfaction with the laboratory experience. Compared to the regular- laboratory students, the environmental students also displayed a greater awareness of the relationship of chemistry to everyday life and a more sophisticated view of science.