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Investigative laboratories in the introductory curriculum engage students as active learners and more accurately represent the true nature of the scientific enterprise. Requiring students to design their own experiments is one strategy for enhancing the investigative component of introductory laboratories. Guidelines are provided for redesigning traditional laboratory exercises so that students plan the details of the experiment within parameters prescribed by the instructor.
The following considerations are useful in identifying what labs can be easily reconfigured to this format, and in determining exactly how to accomplish that restructuring.
1) Which concepts that the laboratory exercise teaches are most important? Can these concepts be rephrased as questions that can be answered experimentally, without turning the lab into a mere verification of known information?
2) Can freshmen be expected to understand the experimental goal well enough to design a reasonable experiment?
3) What knowledge is essential before students can collect meaningful data? Can this information be provided as stand-alone background material?
Types of lab activities that do not work well in this format are also discussed.
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