Chemistry pre-lab sessions

Academic secondee: John Wallis

Students enter university with varying practical skills and as a result many first year laboratory sessions are used as skill development classes involving routine practicals. It is thought these classes do little to enthuse students or to develop the variety of skills required to conduct independent research at levels 3 and 4.

This project involved a major revision of the way that practical organic chemistry is taught at NTU. The project particularly focussed on the following:

• Updating the content to increase the real-life context of practical experiments.
• Increasing the variety of assessments, appropriate to the modern day requirements of laboratory work.
• Introducing 'physical organic chemistry' into the final year course.

The outcomes from this project included the introduction of pre-lab exercises and the contextualisation of practical work. The new laboratory course will help students focus on the practical techniques involved in their first experiments. They will use proformas to record results, which will include laboratory book entries, observations and measurements.

In essence, students will be trained, as scientists, in how to conduct and record work in a professional laboratory environment.