Development of Multi-Week Open-ended Inquiry Fourth-year Chemistry Projects – Year One

In an effort to better prepare UBC’s Chemistry Undergraduates for research and industry demands, we propose to develop open-inquiry based laboratory projects for our 4th year students taking CHEM 445. These new laboratories will replace the current expository, or “cookbook”, experiments which do not promote independent learning. This is in clear contrast with the proposed open-inquiry laboratories. In a typical open-inquiry laboratory, students will choose a project and will be expected to outline and then execute a strategy to bring the project to fruition. Upon approval of the proposal by a teaching assistant and laboratory director, students will test their hypotheses and critically evaluate their results. These new laboratories will require a higher level of learning and understanding and will develop students’ critical-thinking and independent-learning skills, paramount qualities in real world scenarios. Moreover, we believe that these laboratories will allow students to become active participants in their own learning process.

Vishakha Monga, Instructor, Chemistry, Faculty of Science
Jose Rodiguez Nunez, Instructor, Chemistry, Faculty of Science
Guillaume Bussiere, Instructor, Chemistry, Faculty of Science
Christine Rogers, Instructor, Chemistry, Faculty of Science
Robin Stoodley, Instructor, Chemistry, Faculty of Science
Emily Seo, Lab Director, Shared Instrument Facility, Chemistry, Faculty of Science