Assessing the effectiveness of a Virtual Lab for Learning Chemistry

Instructor: David Yaron
Scope: Course – Introduction to Modern Chemistry, MCS
Assessment: Assessing the effectiveness of a Virtual Lab for Learning Chemistry

Motivation:

I found that there was a disconnect between conceptual and procedural knowledge as well as an inability on the part of the students to apply the procedural knowledge they had learned and to interpret the scientific outcomes in appropriate contexts.

Goal:

The Virtual Lab was developed to help students meet three learning goals: 1.) To be able to connect procedural knowledge in the form of mathematical formalisms to authentic chemistry; 2.) To help students develop the procedural knowledge and skills so that they learn not only how to do a procedure, but also when it is applicable; 3.) To help students understand the applicability of their knowledge to real world settings. The goal of the virtual lab is not to replace the physical laboratory. Rather, it is to help students connect their paper and pencil work to actual chemical phenomena by enabling varied practice. The goal of the assessment was to learn how students approached these tasks and whether the lab was effective in improving students learning.

Methods/Tools:

The Virtual Lab enables a new type of interaction with chemical phenomena through a set of manipulatives. In the virtual environment, students can design and carry out their own experiments and see representations of chemistry in virtual space that go well beyond those possible in a physical lab.

Implementation:

Students were observed within the virtual lab learning environment to assess how their learning develops. Students also completed the pre-existing end-of-chapter exercises. The paper-and-pencil exercises, combined with virtual lab experiences, provides additional representations to serve as a bridge between the traditional paper and pencil activities from the textbook and actual chemical phenomena.

Participants.

Thirty to thirty-five students working alone or in pairs were used to gain insights into how students went about solving problems using the lab.

What is the current status?

The lab is continually being used to examine students problem solving process and to test different instructional designs and materials.

Impact/Results:

The observations of student learning helped us learn about how the students learn and think. It showed that use of an elicit-confront-resolve educational strategy, implemented through hints and feedback in the online system was effective in supporting students’ ability to solve problems. We also learned that students find experimental design problems more difficult than text problems. The data collected helped inform further revisions and developments to the online system.