Incorporating Interlab Collaborations into the Organic Chemistry Teaching Laboratories

Abstract

Collaborative experiences have been widely integrated into the classroom and laboratory, with goals to build time management, communication, and team-working skills. Most reported laboratory collaborations occur between students within the same lab section, which could limit the potential benefits of these experiences. Presented herein is an organic chemistry laboratory model in which students collaborate across lab sections (i.e., interlab collaborations) to complete discovery-based, medicinal-chemistry-focused experiments. These experiences provide opportunities for students to reflect on and improve upon their team-working skills. Over the past three years, interlab collaborations have been offered at Muhlenberg College to 105 students in two types of organic chemistry courses. Assessment data, including notebook evaluation scores, peer- and self-evaluations, lab report scores, and student reflections, suggest that these experiences could help build time management, communication, organizational, and data-recording skills. These laboratories could give students a realistic view of collaborative work and allow for the intentional development and assessment of team-working skills in any introductory or upper-level chemistry laboratory. Furthermore, this model provides a framework for reducing lab section sizes by half, a change which has been needed during COVID-19, while still completing the planned lab curriculum.