SoTL Commons Conference Presenters
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Learning Instrumental Chemical Analysis Through Guided Research Experiences and Portfolios
Hilda Solá-Soto (University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras): hildamilagros@hotmail.com
The Instrumental Chemical Analysis Laboratory is an advance chemistry course, were students gain proficiency on theory, operation and data interpretation of analytical instrumentation. This course was redesigned to incorporate guided research experiences and portfolios. With the guided research experiences, students learned the basics of sample handling, instrumentation, data interpretation, and research rationale during the first 8-10 weeks of the course. For the next 5-6 weeks, they performed and presented an original research, which was designed by them after review of literature. The portfolio provided evidences of their work and learning process through the use of reports and diaries, among others. Students, not only gained expertise on the instrumentation, but they engaged on research with hands-on experiences and learned deductive reasoning through the process. The initial success of this approach has been stated in the student reflections presented and in the increased number of students now interested in research .