Converting Existing “Cookbook”
Laboratory Experiments to Inquiry
Format
Wed-09:45-W-01 & Wed-01:00-W-09
Jeff Bigler
jcb@alum.mit.edu
mrbigler@mrbigler.com
What is Inquiry?
• Learning by questioning/experimenting.
• Knowledge is built step-wise and through
relationships with existing knowledge.
• Methods are student-driven.
Questionably Effective
Ways of Teaching Inquiry
• “Figure it out if you want to pass.”
• “Decide what you want to find out (with
minimal guidance), but be sure to make a good
decision.”
Teaching Inquiry Gradually
Disclaimers:
• This is how I develop my students’ inquiry skills. If
you’re doing something different and it ain’t broke,
you don’t need to fix it.
• I don’t pretend that there is a “one right and true
way” to teach inquiry. You might decide to borrow a
couple of ideas and implement them differently, or
you might decide that what I’m doing won’t work
for you at all. If this workshop doesn’t turn out to be
a waste of your time, we all win. 
Teaching Inquiry Gradually
1. Teach students to fill in gaps.
• Teach techniques before experiment.
• Give students a “crude” procedure that guides
them through the outline of the experiment, but
requires them to use techniques without
procedural details.
Teaching Inquiry Gradually
2. Gradually widen the gaps.
• Require students to string multiple techniques
together
• Give an outline of the experiment orally (but not
in written form) and expect them to
remember/figure it out.
Teaching Inquiry Gradually
3. Remove the scaffolding.
• Give students the objective and have class create
experimental plan through Socratic discussion.
• Gradually eliminate the class discussion and require
students to create the experimental plan on their own,
given only an objective.
• Begin introducing the question of “What might be some
possible experiments?” “[For a given experiment], what
would the objective be?” Evaluate student objectives
compared with teacher-directed objectives for relevance
and testability.
Teaching Inquiry Gradually
4. Use student-generated objectives
• Start with a Socratic class discussion of possible
experiments and evaluate the objectives.
• Have students prepare all solutions and materials for their
own experiments.
• Gradually eliminate the class discussion until student
groups are designing and performing their own
experiments. (This will require the ability for lab groups
to be able to perform different experiments
simultaneously.)
• If your school has a Science Fair, encourage students to
string a series of related experiments together to create a
project.
Guiding Questions for Teaching
Students to Plan Experiments
1. What quantity or relationship do you want to
find?
2. Can you measure it directly? (The answer to
this should be “no”—otherwise there would
be no experiment.) If not, how can you
calculate/determine it?
Guiding Questions for Teaching
Students to Plan Experiments
3. What do you need to measure in order to
perform the calculation/determination in step
#2?
4. How can you measure these quantities in an
experiment?
Guiding Questions for Teaching
Students to Plan Experiments
5. Can your experiment differentiate between
results?
• If you are investigating a relationship, can your
experiment determine whether or not the
relationship is causal?
• If you are calculating a quantitative result, can
your experiment resolve data precisely enough?
Problems With This Approach
• Students are explicitly taught a method for
problem-solving, which may discourage other,
more “outside-the-box” methods.
• The process is slow—it can easily take two
years for students to progress from filling in
gaps in a crude procedure to full inquiry.
Plan for Today’s Workshop
1. Form groups. Because of the format of
today’s workshop, there needs to be a
minimum of 3 people per group, and an even
number of groups.
Plan for Today’s Workshop
2. Choose one of the following “cookbook”
experiments:
Molar Mass of a Volatile Liquid Using the
Dumas Method
Kinetics of HCl + S2O32− → SO32− + S
Equilibrium for Fe3+ +SCN− Ý FeSCN2+
Strong Acid-Strong Base Titration
Plan for Today’s Workshop
3. Decide what stage of inquiry you are
adapting the lab for:
a. Beginning:
•
•
Assume students have already been taught necessary
lab techniques.
Write a crude (outline-level) version of the
procedure. Leave out details of lab techniques.
Plan for Today’s Workshop
3. Decide what stage of inquiry you are
adapting the lab for (cont’d):
b. Developing:
•
•
Assume students have already been taught necessary
lab techniques.
Talk through the crude procedure with your students.
Allow them to jot down brief notes, but do not let
them write down everything you say word-for-word.
Plan for Today’s Workshop
3. Decide what stage of inquiry you are
adapting the lab for (cont’d):
c. Approaching Proficiency:
•
•
Assume students have already been taught necessary
lab techniques.
Give students the objective, but let them formulate
their own experimental plan. Use your judgment
about how much support they will need to evaluate,
fine-tune, and implement their plan.
Plan for Today’s Workshop
4. Prepare your “lab materials” (handout and/or
presentation)—15 minutes.
5. Find another group to partner with.
Plan for Today’s Workshop
6. Perform each other’s experiments
(45 minutes):
a. At any given time, at least two of the people in
your group will be “students” performing the
other group’s lab. Role play accordingly—
pretend you are confused and ask for help with
anything that you think would confuse your
own students.
Plan for Today’s Workshop
6. Perform each other’s experiments (cont’d).
b. At any given time, at least one person in your
group will be the “teacher” of the lab that your
group prepared. The first “teacher” will need
to tell the other lab group what stage of inquiry
the lab is designed for, and to communicate the
objective (and possibly crude procedure) to the
other group.
Plan for Today’s Workshop
6. Perform each other’s experiments (cont’d).
c. Within your group, decide how often to switch
roles, ensuring that everyone gets a chance to
be both “teacher” and “student”. (I recommend
switching at least once every 10 minutes.)
Plan for Today’s Workshop
7. At the conclusion of the experiment (and
clean-up), each pair of groups should discuss
the experiment—what went well and any
recommended changes. (15 minutes)