Mistry, N orcid.org/0000-0002-3083-0828 and Gorman, SG (2020) What laboratory skills do students think they possess at the start of University? Chemistry Education Research and Practice. ISSN 1756-1108
Abstract
To be able to design a laboratory course it is important to know what laboratory skills students possess before the course starts. This way the course can focus on developing skills in areas that are lacking. Despite the extensive literature on laboratory education, there are few studies on what laboratory skills students have at this stage of their education. In this work, we aimed to address this by surveying students’ percieved knowledge, experience and confidence of a range of laboratory competencies at the start of a chemistry degree. Our key findings were that students percieved to have knowledge, experience and confidence of performing lower-order competencies such as practical techniques, but lacked the knowledge, experience and confidence to perform higher-order competencies such as designing experiments. From our results, we propose that instructors should be aware that experiments focussing on certain practical skills may not teach students how to perform that technique but are providing more experience and confidence. We also propose instructors should use laboratory courses to teach higher-order skills such as experimental design and problem-solving where these skills are more evidently lacking.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2020. This is an author produced version of an article published in Chemistry Education Research and Practice. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Chemistry (Leeds) > Organic Chemistry (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 05 May 2020 10:45 |
Last Modified: | 06 Apr 2021 00:38 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Royal Society of Chemistry |
Identification Number: | 10.1039/c9rp00104b |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:160056 |