Lesson Study in Chemistry: Student Understanding of Acid/Base Buffers in a Laboratory Setting

Title: Exploring Students' Understanding of Acid/Base Buffers in a Laboratory Setting
Authors: Friesen, Katherine A; Ghodsian, Roghaieh; Turov, Yevgeniya
Discipline: Chemistry
Submission Date: June 4, 2015

Abstract: After the successful redevelopment of Experiment 5 in a previous lesson study, it gave us the opportunity to revisit the next experiment in this acid/base series and work on improving student understanding of buffers, a challenging topic for most students in CHM 104. Though students are usually able to complete the relevant calculations for buffers in lecture, they generally are lost in a laboratory setting when they need to perform the relevant calculations and actually prepare a buffer on their own. A significant portion of the laboratory period is spent on describing buffer preparation and calculations; however, students still seem confused by the procedure and need quite a bit of assistance with the calculations. For this lesson study, we have prepared pre-lab videos that showcase the preparation of the buffer and also streamlined the experiment to only focus on one type of buffer system, which has helped shorten the pre-lab lecture and  alleviated some confusion about preparation. We also found that a modified data sheet allowed the students to guide themselves through the calculations and also helped them relate their thought process to the material they learned in lecture. We are still working on ways to help students bridge the gap between experiment and calculations. 

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