ACD/ChemSketch Promotes Active Learning in Students to Improve Laboratory Performance

Do you wish you could promote active learning and stimulate higher overall cognitive participation of students in the lab? In his organic chemistry laboratory at Gordon College in Georgia, Prof. Allan Gahr uses ChemSketch in a pre-lab exercise¹ to help students better understand the lab experiment they are about to perform. For most organic labs, a concept map can be easily constructed with the underlying hierarchical framework of synthesis, isolation, purification, and characterization of carbon compounds. In Prof. Gahr's lab, students are required to draw diagrams/pictures of each process step in the sequence to be performed, so that they are forced to run through the process mentally before attempt it in reality. As a result, the students gain a better grasp of the overall process and concepts, which allows them to remain in control with less guidance from the instructor or lab assistants.

Professor Gahr writes: "Instructors with enough computers (I like to have one for every three students) available near or in the lab can take advantage of the computer program called ChemSketch 5.0 from Advanced Chemistry Development; the program has templates (clip art) of glassware sufficient for most first-year organic labs. ChemSketch 5.0 is free and can be easily downloaded from the Internet. The synthesis of methyl benzoate, using ChemSketch 5.0, is depicted in Figure 1. Although the program is designed for drawing molecules and predicting their physical properties, it can be also used to manually generate concept maps (Figure 2)."

Figure 1. Synthesis of methyl benzoate

Figure 2. Manually generated concept map

The benefits of using concept maps with students were noted by professor Gahr as follows: "The first time I used this scheme was mid-semester and my expectations were minimal; I simply hoped for a reduction in the number of repetitive procedural questions. To my surprise there was a difference! Questions concerning setup and procedures were nearly absent. I was able to walk (not scramble) around the lab, monitor procedures, and demonstrate techniques to student teams."

This technique works because it gives the student a mental map that they are better able to internalize because they were made to actively draw it. Rather than getting lost in the details of the traditional recipe-based approach, the student understand the big picture within which each step belongs.

¹ Cooperative Chemistry: Concept Mapping in the Organic Chemistry Lab, Allan A. Gahr, Journal of College Science Teaching, 2003; Vol. XXXII, no.5: 311-315.