Project-based learning in the Chemistry Laboratory: A case of Mexico Academic Article in Scopus uri icon

abstract

  • © 2019 IEEE.The study of Chemistry is unpopular to students because their lack of connection to their daily life. Project-based learning in a laboratory environment have shown to change the students' perception. In this work in progress, a methodology is presented where the students relate their Chemistry laboratory course with the project of brewing beer. The objective is to observe how the implementation of the project influences the perception of the students taking the course. A pre-experimental research was designed and implemented with a sample of 29 students of the First-Undergraduate Year for different bachelor degrees in Engineering. The students related some concepts shown during the class with some steps of the process of brewing beer. They also got the experience of speaking with experts that work in the field. Three stages of the project are presented and described. The results, measured by the Institutional Opinion Survey of the Student and the comments the students, show that the teaching methodology satisfies the expectations of the students. As a future work, it is proposed to implement a control group in order to compare the experience of the students in the same course. We also propose to include other variables of analysis and to use a broader instrument of measurement in order to perform parametric statistical tests.

publication date

  • March 1, 2019