Mistry, N., Fitzpatrick, C., & Gorman, S. (2016). Design Your Own Workup: A Guided-Inquiry Experiment for Introductory Organic Laboratory Courses. Journal of Chemical Education, 93(6), 1091–1095.
This experiment was part of a 9 hour practical introduced to a first-year undergraduate laboratory course for Chemistry and Medicinal Chemistry majors structured as part of a rotational laboratory course design. The authors are professors in the School of Chemistry at the University of Leeds, U.K. Each group performing the experiment was given a different mixture to purify in the following sequence: pre-lab quiz (10%); design workup (in the form of a flowchart); check procedure (with the help of a TA); purify mixture; assessment and reflection. Results (n=135) showed a high average score for the pre-lab quiz, 90−95% of students designed a flowchart that would have separated the compounds, and the average final grade for the workup section was 73.8% (similar to the overall grades achieved from other experiments in the course). Feedback (n=58) indicated that the experiment required students to solve problems and improve their problem-solving ability. The authors conclude that the experiment is easy and cost efficient to create while having learning gains that could not be achieved in a recipe-based experiment.