Effects of a Demonstration Laboratory on Student Learning

Laboratory and demonstration have long been used to supplement lecture in chemistry education. Current research indicates that students are better served by laboratories which exercise the higher-order cognitive skills, such as inquiry-based laboratories. However, the time and the resources available to perform these recommended types of laboratories are continually shrinking. Due to these factors, a demonstration-laboratory was designed to allow students to make observations through demonstration rather then through hands-on laboratory. For this study, the hands-on procedures of an inquiry style laboratory were replaced by an instructor demonstration of these same procedures. A significant difference was found between student conceptual understanding before and after the experiment, indicating that students performing the laboratory experiment and students viewing the demonstration-laboratory had an increase in conceptual understanding. However, no significant difference was found between the conceptual understanding of the two groups after the experiment, indicating that students learn roughly the same from both methods and that the demonstration-laboratory at least does no harm to the students conceptually. Long-term effects on student understanding were not measured. Student opinions comparing the demonstration laboratory to a hands-on laboratory were also collected and analyzed.