There was a recent request on the AP-Chem discussion list for information about using technology in inquiry-based experiments. There is a widespread myth in education that throwing technology at a problem will make it better. The assumption behind the myth seems to be that acquiring more data with less effort will enable students to learn the concepts better by doing more data analysis.
My experience has been that the disconnect happens well before that point. Anything that obscures the students’ direct, first-hand experience with the scientific phenomenon behind the data inhibits their ability to understand and process the science. If they can’t understand the science, the data analysis becomes pure number crunching, and we end up with students who get the “correct answer” without having any idea what the “answer” represents or what makes it “correct”. When this happens, we have effectively stripped the science out of our science classes and turned them into pure math.
For example, a computer and probe can measure and plot a nice temperature profile. However, all but the best students are likely to lose sight of the fact that the graph actually represents something—in this case how the temperature changes as a reaction proceeds. Students who do the same experiment with a glass thermometer and write down the temperature every 30 seconds will have fewer data points and will spend more time and effort acquiring those data points, but every one of them will fully understand that the data points are the actual temperatures of the reaction at various times.
In my experience, the people who tout the benefits of using technology in science classes tend to justify their viewpoint by looking at the experiences of academically gifted students—the ones who have a much easier time inferring the science from the data. When I look at my own experiences with average and below-average students (all but the top 20-30%), I find that they have a much harder time describing, explaining, inferring, and predicting the science when an experiment utilizes technology heavily than they do when the experiment uses basic lab equipment and techniques.
A good inquiry-based learning opportunity needs to allow students to ask questions at a basic “what’s actually happening with the science” level. When this is done well in a lab setting, students are interacting with the scientific phenomenon itself as directly as possible, and are “playing” with all of the “what happens if I do this” ideas that come into their minds. This “playing” is how they get a real-life sense of the data trend and what it looks like in a physical setting. A certain amount of “play” time is essential to inquiry-based learning–once they have “played” enough to have a gut-level sense of the phenomenon, they’re ready to do the experiment, and the data will have some meaning for them.
Running a program and seeing the data on a computer screen cuts off their ability to “play” with the phenomenon in this direct, physical manner. This reduces their experience with the phenomenon to a search for trends within the numerical (or graphical) output after the fact.
There is a current discussion over on the ChemEd-L list about virtual (computer simulated) labs as a substitute for the real thing. All of the college professors on the list seem to be reiterating the same viewpoint—that virtual labs are not a substitute for the real thing, and that students whose only experience comes from virtual labs are highly ineffective in a real lab setting. As we add more and more technology to our labs, the students’ experience will become farther and farther removed from the actual chemistry, and will get closer and closer to those virtual labs.
Originally posted to the ap-chem discussion list.
