Session: Undergraduate Research Posters: Chemistry Education:

Chemical Experimentation is a revised alternative to the majors’ General Chemistry Laboratory sequence at the University of Costa Rica. It intends to emphasize scientific thinking and problem solving, and to acquaint novices with the practices of science and basic research. It uses a multimodal instructional approach: Assignments range from problem-based projects to prescriptive online simulations, include team and individual work, and may last one or several weeks. To encourage creative thinking and deep engagement, the course uses asynchronous activities. Household titration of vinegar is an assignment completed using exclusively household materials. It creatively circumvents obstacles associated with logistics, cost, and availability of materials and glassware when performing at-home experiments, while supporting a safe experimenting environment. It addresses other common shortcomings of many at-home activities: little room for creativity and exploration, low conceptual complexity, and little demand of technical skills. Among other topics and skills, this activity covers experiment design/redesign, preparation of solutions, saturation and solubility concepts, dilution calculations, stoichiometric calculations, basic statistics, and acid/base reactions. This work presents the educational rationale and chemical factors considered in the design of the activity, as well as the results of its pilot and its implementation with students under Emergency Remote Teaching, ERT, along with their evaluation. Overall, precision and accuracy of student results were satisfactory. The pedagogical goals of the activity were accomplished, although modifications are suggested to improve future iterations. This kind of work contributes to ERT, but also to respond to issues of laboratory course costs, and those related to scarcity of physical laboratory space as college enrollment grows.

Santiago Sandi-Urena

University of Costa Rica

Appearances