How Student Perceptions of Lab and Lecture Relate to Ideas on “Thinking Like a Chemist”
Seiham Alansary, Angelica Kochkarova
Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
Faculty Supervisor: Michelle Sinapuelas
Students enrolled in general chemistry at the undergraduate level are primarily first-year students enrolling immediately following their high school graduation. These students provide insight into student expectations for science learning as they complete high school and transition to university-level science courses. This project will share findings from 130 undergraduate students enrolled in the second semester of a year-long general chemistry course series to better understand how they viewed what it means to “think like a chemist” and how this aligns to their expectations for laboratory activities during class. Students were surveyed using The Meaningful Learning in the Laboratory Instrument (MLLI) along with asking them to describe what it means to “think like a chemist”. They were also asked whether they perceived a connection between their coursework and other STEM courses they had taken before or in conjunction with their final semester of general chemistry, and how they felt general chemistry would serve their overall goals—either academically or personally. A subset of 4 students were interviewed to explore these ideas further and also asked about the perception if lecture and laboratory activities relating to one another. Our current findings show that based on trends of how they describe what it is to “think like a chemist” student responses indicating their cognitive (thinking) and affective (feeling) expectations of laboratory activities were also different (p<0.05 based on One-way ANOVA analysis between groups). This study contributes to our understanding of students in general chemistry and furthers our understanding of students’ cognitive and affective expectations and experiences in the context of general chemistry laboratory experiences. By comparing students' responses of these cognitive and affective expectations in laboratory courses compared by category of responses to the idea of what it is to “think like a chemist” may help general chemistry instructors gain a deeper understanding of possible student beliefs about chemistry and what they may perceive as the goal in learning this content. This understanding can help lead to further curricular innovations to encourage student thinking towards understanding the connected nature of chemistry content and its applications in laboratory experiments that lead to further understanding of real-world applications.