A Glowing Recommendation: A Project-Based Cooperative Laboratory

Laboratory Experiment pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc

A Glowing Recommendation: A Project-Based Cooperative Laboratory Activity To Promote Use of the Scientific and Engineering Practices Justin H. Carmel,* Joseph S. Ward, and Melanie M. Cooper Department of Chemistry, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, United States S Supporting Information *

ABSTRACT: One of the most mystifying products on the market for people at any age is the glow stick: a plastic tube that, when snapped, creates a flood of bright, brilliantly colored light without the use of electricity or significant production of heat. In this case, the chemiluminescence reaction also provides an exciting phenomenon through which we can engage students in the Scientific and Engineering Practices. This laboratory project has been developed both to pique students’ interest about the task at hand and to have them practice science in a more authentic way than a traditional “cookbook” experiment. In completing this project, students will not only gain an understanding of the factors affecting the rate of the chemiluminescence reaction but also be able to create their own procedures, analyze and interpret their data, and construct an evidence-based argument from their results. KEYWORDS: First-Year Undergraduate/General, Laboratory Instruction, Collaborative/Cooperative Learning, Hands-On Learning/Manipulatives, Inquiry-Based/Discovery Learning, Fluorescence Spectroscopy, Kinetics, UV−Vis Spectroscopy

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BACKGROUND While most chemists believe that a wet laboratory experience is an integral part of the education of students in chemistry, there is less agreement about what the important outcomes of such an experience should be. Some feel that the laboratory is where students learn to apply lecture content, while others feel it is for teaching students laboratory and problem-solving skills.1 There is, however, sparse evidence that the traditional approach to laboratory activities produces improvements in understanding, use of knowledge, or the affective domain.2−4 That being so, it is important to develop alternatives to the common individual, confirmatory exercises that are often used for all students. This problem has not gone unremarked. For example, the Engage to Excel report from the President’s Council of Advisors of Science and Technology (PCAST) specifically called out poor laboratory experiences in gateway courses and emphasized that change needs to happen in gateway courses across all of the sciences.5 One potential approach to developing a transformed laboratory program is to have students use their knowledge to solve problems and tasks that require them to engage in the Scientific and Engineering Practices such as analyzing and interpreting data or engaging in argumentation from evidence. For example, the Cooperative Chemistry laboratory approach6−8 provides students with a real-life scenario and asks them to use their chemistry knowledge to design experiments and collect, analyze, and interpret data to make and support claims about their findings. This approach was developed on the basis of theories of how students learn chemistry9−15 and was designed to provide students in large-enrollment © XXXX American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.

courses with an experience that is as close to a research experience as possible given the constraints of the system. Cooperative Chemistry is one of a number of approaches used across the science disciplines, including chemistry, to transform the laboratory environment and increase student learning.16−18 At Michigan State University, there are a number of transformation efforts across multiple departments and colleges focused on providing students with opportunities to engage with disciplinary core ideas in the context of scientific practices. That is, all of these transformation efforts focus not only on what students should learn but also what they should do with that knowledge. The ultimate goal of these projects is to enhance student learning of science, specifically as it relates to the Scientific Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas.19

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SCIENTIFIC AND ENGINEERING PRACTICES In order to help students think and operate more like scientists, we must provide opportunities for them to do so. The National Research Council’s Framework for K−12 Science Education provides a summary of the current state of research on science education and a vision for how science education can be structured.20 This research indicates that by engaging in learning opportunities that blend the Scientific and Engineering Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Disciplinary Core Ideas, Received: August 18, 2016 Revised: January 30, 2017

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DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00628 J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX

Journal of Chemical Education

Laboratory Experiment

Figure 1. Scientific and Engineering Practices addressed by the chemiluminescence project. Shaded boxes represent practices that are present, and white boxes represent practices that are absent. Explicit prompts from the project highlighting how a particular practice is addressed can be found in the colored callout boxes.

used.21 The 3D-LAP gives Scientific Practices criteria for both selected and constructed response tasks. For the purpose of coding, this laboratory project was considered one constructed response task, as none of these questions are meant to be asked on its own; each question develops ideas for the next, ultimately arriving at the project summary. An example of the constructed response criteria from the 3D-LAP21 for Constructing Explanations and Engaging in Argument from Evidence includes these question characteristics: 1. The question gives an event, observation, or phenomenon. 2. The question gives or asks students to make a claim based on the given event, observation, or phenomenon. 3. The question asks students to provide scientific principles or evidence in the form of data or observations to support the claim. 4. The question asks students to provide reasoning about why the scientific principles or evidence support the claim. In order for the project to be considered as providing an opportunity for students to engage in a particular practice, it must meet all of the criteria for that practice. In the original 3D-LAP, some of the Scientific and Engineering Practices were not included since they would be difficult to include on an exam. However, in the laboratory setting these practices make more sense, and therefore, criteria were developed (for designing solutions and communicating information) and are included in the Supporting Information. In this project, students engage in planning and carrying out investigations, as the students must come up with a plan for how to achieve the goals of the project and then execute that plan. The project also engages students in designing solutions, as they must design two formulations for glow stick reaction systems that meet the customer needs stated in the project scenario. These and the other practices in which the project engages students are shown in Figure 1. Shaded boxes

learning experiences can move past the rote memorization of procedures, content trivia, and facts to support building a deeper scientific understanding of the world surrounding our students. The Framework’s Scientific and Engineering Practices were developed on the basis of what scientists and engineers do on a regular basis and can be considered as the disaggregated components of inquiry. The eight Scientific and Engineering Practices20 are 1. asking questions and defining problems 2. developing and using models 3. planning and carrying out investigations 4. analyzing and interpreting data 5. using mathematics and computational thinking 6. constructing explanations and designing solutions 7. engaging in argument from evidence 8. obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information Having students engage in these practices can foster a sense of how scientific knowledge develops and immerses them in the authentic process of “doing science”.20 This engagement could have implications for their interest in careers in science and engineering and motivate them to continue their studies in science. Although it was written for a K−12 audience, as that was the charge of the report committee, it is likely that the Framework still applies to higher education, as students early in their university studies are not very different from those finishing their high school careers. Incorporating the Practices

Engaging in the practices is scaffolded for the students through numerous planning and summary questions that are designed to direct students in their planning and synthesis of information for the project. To determine whether the practices are present in the project, the Scientific Practices criteria from the ThreeDimensional Learning Assessment Protocol (3D-LAP) were B




chemiluminescence, but it uses a diphenyl oxalate/hydrogen peroxide/dye system, also known as the Cyalume system, which is present in commercial glow sticks. This system is easier to work with, produces light for long enough that students can make accurate time measurements, and is visibly affected by pH, temperature, and the presence of a catalyst, giving students a wide range of parameters that they can investigate. It is also a system that has been used in prior laboratory activities published in this Journal.23−27 The novelty of this activity rests in the fact that it has an explicit emphasis on the Scientific and Engineering Practices from the Framework, serving as a guide or template for how these practices can be incorporated into existing laboratory activities. The scenario for this project is shown in Box 1.

represent practices that are incorporated into the project, and white boxes represent those that are not. Figure 1 also shows examples of questions or groups of questions that are regarded as a practice. As can be seen, students will engage with most of the Scientific and Engineering Practices by doing this laboratory project. It was not the authors’ intent to make a laboratory activity that engages students in all of the practices but rather to create one that can be used in conjunction with other activities that complement the practices incorporated here to give students a wide range of experiences across an entire semester.

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EXPERIMENT DETAILS This experiment was successfully completed by 180 students in Summer 2016 and will be implemented in Fall 2016 and Spring 2017 for the whole population of first-semester general chemistry lab students, approximately 1400 students per semester. The chemistry laboratory transformation has implemented cooperative, multiweek, project-based activities in both semesters of general chemistry lab. Students work in groups of four to complete their assigned project tasks. The projects replace a very traditional “cookbook” curriculum that consisted of numerous expository and/or confirmatory experiments completed individually or in pairs, with students collecting data in premade tables and following prescribed calculations to arrive at a final answer or conclusion. Often there was a “right answer” for the experiment, in which case students were given a grade based on whether the desired outcome or product was obtained. Groups begin each project with a planning document that is constructed using provided guiding questions and goals of the project. Since the projects are multiweek, the planning for each experiment is done at the end of the previous week’s lab period. The plans may not be fully thought out at that time and often need revision, but after feedback is given and groups have time to look up further resources, their planning documents are edited and are ready for use by the time the plan needs to be executed. The plan is required to have what each group member will do to contribute to the goal each day, with the emphasis that everyone in the group must be doing chemistry (e.g., recording observations in the lab notebook, mixing reagents, analyzing/graphing data, etc.). While in lab, students record their individual work in their electronic lab notebooks (via LabArchives), and once everyone is finished, the groups reconvene, synthesize the day’s findings, and make a plan for the next week to continue moving forward with the work. This project cycle is the same for each meeting of the laboratory course, with the exception of days when they present their findings via poster or oral presentation; planning for the next week still occurs at the end of those lab periods. The laboratory is facilitated by graduate teaching assistants (TAs) who attend weekly training sessions on how to approach each week’s tasks and how to facilitate their students’ discussions. Graduate TAs are also required to complete the project as if they were students to familiarize themselves with the chemistry of the project and give them a chance to practice. While most of the projects came from a published laboratory curriculum, Cooperative Chemistry,22 there were also projects that were developed in-house or modified from activities done at other universities. This activity is designed to replace one of the Cooperative Chemistry projects in our first-semester curriculum: an investigation of chemiluminescence using luminol.22 The new project, described here and provided in full in the Supporting Information, still focuses on the investigation of

Box 1. Chemiluminescence Project Scenario You work for a company that produces glow sticks based upon the chemistry of the Cyalume system. This type of lighting is ideal for use in situations where electricity may be unavailable or dangerous, since the production of chemiluminescent light can be contained, used without electricity, and produces only a small amount of heat. A customer has approached the company and has asked for two specific types of glow sticks: (1) one that provides a very intense glow for approximately a minute and (2) one that has a novel color and lasts as long as possible. Example Student Outcomes

Students collect fluorescence intensity spectra of all four dye solutions (rhodamine B, rhodamine 6G, 9,10-bis(phenylethynyl)anthracene, and 9,10-diphenylanthracene) using a Vernier SpectroVis Plus spectrophotometer in intensity mode and Vernier Logger Pro software. Students also track the intensity of the fluorescence at a single wavelength over time using Logger Pro. Reagents, described in detail in the Supporting Information, are dispensed using reagent bottle pumps set to 1 mL for ease of use by the students. The dye pumps are set at 0.5 mL so that when they mix colors, the resulting solution does not overfill the cuvette. It is important to note that because all of the reagents are in a 50:50 ethyl acetate/isopropanol solution, the cuvettes need to be polyethylene in order to ensure that they do not degrade over the course of the experiments (details are provided in the Supporting Information). During the first part of the project, the groups are asked to determine the different colors that the dyes produce and quantify the intensity of the fluorescence to use in their further experiments to see whether they can make the reaction glow brighter. Example fluorescence intensity spectra of all four dyes are shown in Figure 2. Once the groups have knowledge of what colors the dyes produce, they can investigate the effects of temperature (Figure 3), the addition of acid, base, or catalyst to the reaction mixture (Figure 4), and varying the amount of each reagent used in order to fulfill the two original tasks from the scenario. It should be noted that prior investigations with this system reported a greater response to the addition of catalyst.13 This difference is likely due to the fact that our salicylate is a saturated solution (in the 50:50 solvent mixture) whereas the prior investigation added pure solid reagent. When all of the experimentation is complete, the groups are asked to create an evidence-based argument about how C




Figure 2. Example fluorescence intensity spectra for all four dyes: rhodamine B (pink line); rhodamine 6G (orange line); 9,10-bis(phenylethynyl)anthracene (green line); 9,10-diphenylanthracene (blue line).

Figure 3. Example fluorescence intensity spectra for reactions performed with rhodamine 6G at ∼3 °C (ice/water bath, blue line), ∼22 °C (room temperature, green line), and ∼55 °C (warm water bath, red line). D




Figure 4. Example fluorescence intensity (at 580 nm) vs time graph for reactions performed with rhodamine 6G: typical reaction progress (no additions) (red line); addition of acid (0.1 M HCl) at t = 30 s (orange line); addition of base (0.1 M NaOH) at t = 30 s (blue line); addition of catalyst (saturated sodium salicylate) at t = 30 s (green line).

temperature affects the Cyalume reaction system. Responses to the prompt are very successful, and most of the groups are able to construct a strong argument, as shown by the following example: Our claim is that [as] temperature increases, the intensity of the light will increase, but the duration will decrease. At our highest temperature (40 °C), our intensity was higher, and lasted a shorter period of time. At our lower temperature (0 °C), our light intensity was lower and on average lasted the duration of the 3 min we tested. This evidence supports our claim because as the temperature increased, so did the intensity of the light. The increased temperature also had an inverse relationship with the duration of the light, because as the temperature increased, the duration decreased. As temperature increases, the kinetic energy of the molecules within the reaction system increases, therefore increasing the amount of collisions within the reactionincreasing the intensity of the light. Since the reaction is sped up with the increased temperature, the light burns more brightly, but doesn’t last as long, causing the decrease in the duration of the reaction at increased temperatures. As can be seen from the example, students are not only able to correctly identify the relationships between temperature and the duration and intensity of the reaction but also to provide a molecular-level causal mechanism to explain why the observed phenomenon occurred. When we investigated the performance of all enrolled students on this evidence-based argument (Figure 5), we found that most of the students scored 7.5 points or higher, suggesting not only that the students are successful in completing the lab but also that they have an understanding of what is happening at the molecular level to

Figure 5. Histogram and descriptive statistics of student performance on the evidence-based argument for the chemiluminescence project. The rubric for scoring the students’ responses can be found in the Supporting Information.

explain the phenomena they observe at the macroscopic level. The rubric used to score the student responses has been included in the Supporting Information.

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HAZARDS Students are required to wear safety goggles and protective gloves throughout the experiment. As part of the planning process, students are required to read and summarize the MSDSs E




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for all of the chemicals used, and these should be made available in lab or online. All of the reagents and solvents should be considered hazardous or irritating upon contact or inhalation. The organic solvents used are potential fire hazards. All of the waste disposal should be done in compliance with local requirements.

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ASSOCIATED CONTENT

S Supporting Information *

The Supporting Information is available on the ACS Publications website at DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00628. The full laboratory project, chemical and preparation information, the additional practices criteria, and the grading rubric for the evidence-based arguments (PDF, DOCX)

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AUTHOR INFORMATION

Corresponding Author

*E-mail: [email protected]. ORCID

Justin H. Carmel: 0000-0001-9281-3751 Melanie M. Cooper: 0000-0002-7050-8649 Notes

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank the teaching assistants and students in the general chemistry lab course that completed the lab and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for funding (Award 52008102).

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REFERENCES

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A Glowing Recommendation: A Project-Based Cooperative Laboratory

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