My research involves chemistry laboratory development. I am looking for new ways to improve the laboratory program here at Penn State-Behrend by not only providing increased interest in chemistry but also by helping the student learn concepts that were introduced in the lecture. There are many ways to improve a laboratory program. The current methods talked about today are cooperative learning and discovery based laboratories. I feel there must be a way to incorporate both of these methods along with some traditional experiments to provide a laboratory course that will teach the student a lot more than just laboratory techniques for future use. Cooperative learning will help the student learn how to communicate with others and discovery based experiments will give the student the confidence to think for him or herself.
