(19e) Not Your "Normal Chemistry Lab": Enhancing Critical Thinking Through New Unit Operations Laboratory Approach

Throughout this new apporach to UO Lab, the students are led through thinking critically about data, realizing the concept of no single right answer, and learning that data can have multiple levels of possible meanings.  Three types of experiential learning (Discovery, Development, and Design – 3D) that integrate the students’ maturing level of understanding of fundamental phenomena through the classroom are used to deepen the knowledge of concepts and build engineering problem solving skills through the practice of critical thinking.   For the Discovery experiments, students role play “discoverer”; making observations and postulating general theory and relationships between governing parameters based on their current knowledge and observations, prior to a detailed explanation in the classroom.   Thus the exercise their observation and analysis skills without expectations – or at least not being entirely sure of the “correct” answer.  The Development experiments use traditional unit operations experiments to first teach students the key elements of a successful experimental method, and then allow them to create their own experiment to be completed by a different group of students; thus identifying interesting scientific questions based on critical analysis of their own data, and then designing an experiment to help answer those scientific questions.    For the Design experiment, the students are given an engineering challenge which they research (critical analysis of literature), perform bench scale experiments (critical analysis of their own data), design a solution, test a solution (more critical analysis), and then redesign and test a solution.  For example, students build a river, the instructor pollutes the river, and the students have to engineer a way to clean up the river.