Thus, for the last twenty years I have concentrated my efforts on developing and evaluating teaching methods that foster higher-level thinking abilities. One of the products of this work is a freshman chemistry lab manual, Inquiries into Chemistry , whose approach requires students to find patterns in data and explain them. In many experiments the students are also required to design their own experiments and redesign them as data comes in. This manual, that has been used in colleges across the country for almost two decades, puts the freshmen into a quasi-research mode in the lab. It does work.
Students are mentally active in lab and are excited by their experience.
It is also a kick to teach because of the involved logical arguments one can get into with students. In these courses we put freshmen and sophomores in small teams, give them a real-world problem for an outside agency and have them work on that problem for an entire semester. In these courses, students from all departments are mixed together in teams and the teaching faculty come from all departments. In all such developmental work, it is essential that thoughtful measurement be made on the advantages to the student of the new teaching approach. This is the research side of educational innovation.