Specialty Chemistry Forums > Chemical Education and Careers
Classroom vs. Lab
objectivist:
lab helps me understand chemistry and i learn better from it than what i learn in lecture. sometimes what i do in lab doesnt match with lecture, and sometimes it does.
Donaldson Tan:
my experience of labwork at university is not great. often a time, i did the lab work before the theory was taught, so I had no idea why I am doing this and that according to the procedure given. I am just following instructions in the lab. It's only after I had done the lab work, spent some time reading up some chapters in a textbook, then I've a good idea of my lab work and often regret that I failed to improvise my experiment or had measured the wrong variables.
hmx9123:
Regardless of the separation of lecture and lab into different courses, it's sad that lab usually doesn't have the prominence of lecture either in credit hours or in 'importance' as alluded to by most instructors. As geodome stated, I think it's pretty common experience to have students do a lab out of sync with their lecture, thus really questioning the entire relevance of it. My experience was even worse--the lab instructor didn't communicate with the lecture instructor and the two courses had nothing to do with one another content wise.
That being said, I personally like lab more. I tend to think for most students the lab simply reinforces the lecture material, so they should be taught together. However, for chem majors whose line of work it is to do research, I think the lab definitely is more important and needs a lot more prominence. Out of all the labs that I've seen, one was fantastic. Dr. Don DeCoste (U of Illinois) does a fantastic job with labs by using an innovative approach--he gives no procedure for how to do something. He gives the students a list of reagents they can use and presents them with a problem: how to accomplish a certain reaction, how to measure something, or how to test a hypothesis. It's up to the students how to do it. They then present their procedures to Don, who gives them the go ahead or helps them to revise it and gives them more questions to think about. I really like this idea, because it makes the students really take ownership of their procedures, not just read through it and wonder what the hell they're doing. When you think about it, that's what research is: you try and figure out how to solve a problem, then you have to do literature searches and come up with your own procedure. Obviously, in the interest of time, the lecture relates closely to what's going on in lab, and the choice of reagents is pretty limited, so they can't come up with some really crazy stuff, but it is still very much a thinking process.
Donaldson Tan:
--- Quote from: hmx9123 on May 11, 2005, 03:55:09 AM ---Dr. Don DeCoste (U of Illinois) does a fantastic job with labs by using an innovative approach--he gives no procedure for how to do something. He gives the students a list of reagents they can use and presents them with a problem: how to accomplish a certain reaction, how to measure something, or how to test a hypothesis. It's up to the students how to do it. They then present their procedures to Don, who gives them the go ahead or helps them to revise it and gives them more questions to think about . it is still very much a thinking process.
--- End quote ---
LOL. That's what I do for my pilot plant study. That's why I enjoy it tremendously as well.
NandhiniReddy:
i think both lab and classes are necessary. taking a class in lab and showing the students practically whatever is taken, will be useful
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