Laboratory Experiment

pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc

A Glowing Recommendation: A Project-Based Cooperative

Laboratory Activity To Promote Use of the Scientific and
Engineering Practices
Justin H. Carmel,* Joseph S. Ward, and Melanie M. Cooper
Department of Chemistry, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, United States
*
S Supporting Information

ABSTRACT: One of the most mystifying products on the market for people at any age
is the glow stick: a plastic tube that, when snapped, creates a flood of bright, brilliantly
colored light without the use of electricity or significant production of heat. In this case,
the chemiluminescence reaction also provides an exciting phenomenon through which
we can engage students in the Scientific and Engineering Practices. This laboratory
project has been developed both to pique students’ interest about the task at hand and to
have them practice science in a more authentic way than a traditional “cookbook”
experiment. In completing this project, students will not only gain an understanding of
the factors affecting the rate of the chemiluminescence reaction but also be able to create
their own procedures, analyze and interpret their data, and construct an evidence-based
argument from their results.

KEYWORDS: First-Year Undergraduate/General, Laboratory Instruction, Collaborative/Cooperative Learning,

Hands-On Learning/Manipulatives, Inquiry-Based/Discovery Learning, Fluorescence Spectroscopy, Kinetics, UV−Vis Spectroscopy

■ BACKGROUND
While most chemists believe that a wet laboratory experience is
courses with an experience that is as close to a research experi-
ence as possible given the constraints of the system. Cooper-
an integral part of the education of students in chemistry, there ative Chemistry is one of a number of approaches used across
is less agreement about what the important outcomes of such the science disciplines, including chemistry, to transform the
an experience should be. Some feel that the laboratory is where laboratory environment and increase student learning.16−18
At Michigan State University, there are a number of
students learn to apply lecture content, while others feel it is
transformation efforts across multiple departments and colleges
for teaching students laboratory and problem-solving skills.1
focused on providing students with opportunities to engage
There is, however, sparse evidence that the traditional approach
with disciplinary core ideas in the context of scientific practices.
to laboratory activities produces improvements in under-
That is, all of these transformation efforts focus not only on
standing, use of knowledge, or the affective domain.2−4 That
what students should learn but also what they should do
being so, it is important to develop alternatives to the common
with that knowledge. The ultimate goal of these projects is to
individual, confirmatory exercises that are often used for all
enhance student learning of science, specifically as it relates
students. This problem has not gone unremarked. For example,
to the Scientific Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core
the Engage to Excel report from the President’s Council of
Ideas.19

Advisors of Science and Technology (PCAST) specifically
called out poor laboratory experiences in gateway courses and
emphasized that change needs to happen in gateway courses
across all of the sciences.5 One potential approach to devel-
oping a transformed laboratory program is to have students use
their knowledge to solve problems and tasks that require them
to engage in the Scientific and Engineering Practices such as
analyzing and interpreting data or engaging in argumentation
from evidence. For example, the Cooperative Chemistry lab-
oratory approach6−8 provides students with a real-life scenario
and asks them to use their chemistry knowledge to design
experiments and collect, analyze, and interpret data to make
and support claims about their findings. This approach was
developed on the basis of theories of how students learn chem-
istry9−15 and was designed to provide students in large-enrollment
© XXXX American Chemical Society and
Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
■
SCIENTIFIC AND ENGINEERING PRACTICES
In order to help students think and operate more like scientists,
we must provide opportunities for them to do so. The National
Research Council’s Framework for K−12 Science Education
provides a summary of the current state of research on science
education and a vision for how science education can be
structured.20 This research indicates that by engaging in
learning opportunities that blend the Scientific and Engineering
Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Disciplinary Core Ideas,
Received: August 18, 2016
Revised: January 30, 2017
A DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00628
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Journal of Chemical Education
Figure 1. Scientific and Engineering Practices addressed by the chemiluminescence project. Shaded boxes represent practices that are present, and
white boxes represent practices that are absent. Explicit prompts from the project highlighting how a particular practice is addressed can be found in
the colored callout boxes.
learning experiences can move past the rote memorization of
procedures, content trivia, and facts to support building a
deeper scientific understanding of the world surrounding our
students.
The Framework’s Scientific and Engineering Practices were
developed on the basis of what scientists and engineers do on a
regular basis and can be considered as the disaggregated
components of inquiry. The eight Scientific and Engineering
Practices20 are
1. asking questions and defining problems
2. developing and using models
3. planning and carrying out investigations
4. analyzing and interpreting data
5. using mathematics and computational thinking
6. constructing explanations and designing solutions
7. engaging in argument from evidence
8. obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information
Having students engage in these practices can foster a sense of
how scientific knowledge develops and immerses them in the
authentic process of “doing science”.20 This engagement could
have implications for their interest in careers in science and
engineering and motivate them to continue their studies in
science. Although it was written for a K−12 audience, as that
was the charge of the report committee, it is likely that the
Framework still applies to higher education, as students early in
their university studies are not very different from those
finishing their high school careers.
Incorporating the Practices
Engaging in the practices is scaffolded for the students through
numerous planning and summary questions that are designed
to direct students in their planning and synthesis of information
for the project. To determine whether the practices are present
in the project, the Scientific Practices criteria from the Three-
Dimensional Learning Assessment Protocol (3D-LAP) were
B DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00628
Laboratory Experiment
used.21 The 3D-LAP gives Scientific Practices criteria for both
selected and constructed response tasks. For the purpose of
coding, this laboratory project was considered one constructed
response task, as none of these questions are meant to be
asked on its own; each question develops ideas for the next,
ultimately arriving at the project summary. An example of
the constructed response criteria from the 3D-LAP21 for
Constructing Explanations and Engaging in Argument from
Evidence includes these question characteristics:
1. The question gives an event, observation, or phenomenon.
2. The question gives or asks students to make a claim
based on the given event, observation, or phenomenon.
3. The question asks students to provide scientific
principles or evidence in the form of data or observations
to support the claim.
4. The question asks students to provide reasoning about
why the scientific principles or evidence support the claim.
In order for the project to be considered as providing an
opportunity for students to engage in a particular practice,
it must meet all of the criteria for that practice. In the original
3D-LAP, some of the Scientific and Engineering Practices were
not included since they would be difficult to include on an
exam. However, in the laboratory setting these practices make
more sense, and therefore, criteria were developed (for
designing solutions and communicating information) and are
included in the Supporting Information.
In this project, students engage in planning and carrying out
investigations, as the students must come up with a plan for
how to achieve the goals of the project and then execute that
plan. The project also engages students in designing solutions,
as they must design two formulations for glow stick reaction
systems that meet the customer needs stated in the project
scenario. These and the other practices in which the project
engages students are shown in Figure 1. Shaded boxes
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Journal of Chemical Education
represent practices that are incorporated into the project, and
white boxes represent those that are not. Figure 1 also shows
examples of questions or groups of questions that are regarded
as a practice. As can be seen, students will engage with most of
the Scientific and Engineering Practices by doing this laboratory
project. It was not the authors’ intent to make a laboratory
activity that engages students in all of the practices but rather to
create one that can be used in conjunction with other activities
that complement the practices incorporated here to give stu-
dents a wide range of experiences across an entire semester.
■
EXPERIMENT DETAILS
This experiment was successfully completed by 180 students in
Summer 2016 and will be implemented in Fall 2016 and Spring
2017 for the whole population of first-semester general chem-
istry lab students, approximately 1400 students per semester.
The chemistry laboratory transformation has implemented
cooperative, multiweek, project-based activities in both
semesters of general chemistry lab. Students work in groups
of four to complete their assigned project tasks. The projects
replace a very traditional “cookbook” curriculum that consisted
of numerous expository and/or confirmatory experiments
completed individually or in pairs, with students collecting
data in premade tables and following prescribed calculations to
arrive at a final answer or conclusion. Often there was a “right
answer” for the experiment, in which case students were given a
grade based on whether the desired outcome or product was
obtained.
Groups begin each project with a planning document that is
constructed using provided guiding questions and goals of the
project. Since the projects are multiweek, the planning for each
experiment is done at the end of the previous week’s lab period.
The plans may not be fully thought out at that time and often
need revision, but after feedback is given and groups have time
to look up further resources, their planning documents are
edited and are ready for use by the time the plan needs to be
executed. The plan is required to have what each group mem-
ber will do to contribute to the goal each day, with the empha-
sis that everyone in the group must be doing chemistry (e.g.,
recording observations in the lab notebook, mixing reagents,
analyzing/graphing data, etc.). While in lab, students record
their individual work in their electronic lab notebooks (via
LabArchives), and once everyone is finished, the groups
reconvene, synthesize the day’s findings, and make a plan for
the next week to continue moving forward with the work. This
project cycle is the same for each meeting of the laboratory
course, with the exception of days when they present their
findings via poster or oral presentation; planning for the next
week still occurs at the end of those lab periods. The laboratory
is facilitated by graduate teaching assistants (TAs) who attend
weekly training sessions on how to approach each week’s tasks
and how to facilitate their students’ discussions. Graduate TAs
are also required to complete the project as if they were
students to familiarize themselves with the chemistry of the
project and give them a chance to practice.
While most of the projects came from a published laboratory
curriculum, Cooperative Chemistry,22 there were also projects
that were developed in-house or modified from activities done
at other universities. This activity is designed to replace one of
the Cooperative Chemistry projects in our first-semester curri-
culum: an investigation of chemiluminescence using luminol.22
The new project, described here and provided in full in the
Supporting Information, still focuses on the investigation of
C DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00628
Laboratory Experiment
chemiluminescence, but it uses a diphenyl oxalate/hydrogen
peroxide/dye system, also known as the Cyalume system,
which is present in commercial glow sticks. This system is
easier to work with, produces light for long enough that stu-
dents can make accurate time measurements, and is visibly
affected by pH, temperature, and the presence of a catalyst,
giving students a wide range of parameters that they can investi-
gate. It is also a system that has been used in prior laboratory
activities published in this Journal.23−27 The novelty of this
activity rests in the fact that it has an explicit emphasis on the
Scientific and Engineering Practices from the Framework,
serving as a guide or template for how these practices can be
incorporated into existing laboratory activities. The scenario for
this project is shown in Box 1.
Box 1. Chemiluminescence Project Scenario
You work for a company that produces glow sticks based upon
the chemistry of the Cyalume system. This type of lighting is
ideal for use in situations where electricity may be unavailable
or dangerous, since the production of chemiluminescent light
can be contained, used without electricity, and produces only a
small amount of heat. A customer has approached the
company and has asked for two specific types of glow sticks:
(1) one that provides a very intense glow for approximately a
minute and (2) one that has a novel color and lasts as long as
possible.
Example Student Outcomes
Students collect fluorescence intensity spectra of all four dye
solutions (rhodamine B, rhodamine 6G, 9,10-bis(phenyl-
ethynyl)anthracene, and 9,10-diphenylanthracene) using a
Vernier SpectroVis Plus spectrophotometer in intensity mode
and Vernier Logger Pro software. Students also track the inten-
sity of the fluorescence at a single wavelength over time using
Logger Pro. Reagents, described in detail in the Supporting
Information, are dispensed using reagent bottle pumps set to
1 mL for ease of use by the students. The dye pumps are set at
0.5 mL so that when they mix colors, the resulting solution
does not overfill the cuvette. It is important to note that
because all of the reagents are in a 50:50 ethyl acetate/isopro-
panol solution, the cuvettes need to be polyethylene in order to
ensure that they do not degrade over the course of the experi-
ments (details are provided in the Supporting Information).
During the first part of the project, the groups are asked to
determine the different colors that the dyes produce and
quantify the intensity of the fluorescence to use in their further
experiments to see whether they can make the reaction glow
brighter. Example fluorescence intensity spectra of all four dyes
are shown in Figure 2.
Once the groups have knowledge of what colors the dyes
produce, they can investigate the effects of temperature (Figure 3),
the addition of acid, base, or catalyst to the reaction mixture
(Figure 4), and varying the amount of each reagent used in
order to fulfill the two original tasks from the scenario.
It should be noted that prior investigations with this system
reported a greater response to the addition of catalyst.13 This
difference is likely due to the fact that our salicylate is a satu-
rated solution (in the 50:50 solvent mixture) whereas the prior
investigation added pure solid reagent.
When all of the experimentation is complete, the groups
are asked to create an evidence-based argument about how
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Figure 2. Example fluorescence intensity spectra for all four dyes: rhodamine B (pink line); rhodamine 6G (orange line); 9,10-bis(phenyl-
ethynyl)anthracene (green line); 9,10-diphenylanthracene (blue line).

Figure 3. Example fluorescence intensity spectra for reactions performed with rhodamine 6G at ∼3 °C (ice/water bath, blue line), ∼22 °C (room
temperature, green line), and ∼55 °C (warm water bath, red line).

D DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00628
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Figure 4. Example fluorescence intensity (at 580 nm) vs time graph for reactions performed with rhodamine 6G: typical reaction progress (no
additions) (red line); addition of acid (0.1 M HCl) at t = 30 s (orange line); addition of base (0.1 M NaOH) at t = 30 s (blue line); addition of
catalyst (saturated sodium salicylate) at t = 30 s (green line).

temperature affects the Cyalume reaction system. Responses to

the prompt are very successful, and most of the groups are able
to construct a strong argument, as shown by the following
example:
Our claim is that [as] temperature increases, the intensity of
the light will increase, but the duration will decrease. At our
highest temperature (40 °C), our intensity was higher, and
lasted a shorter period of time. At our lower temperature
(0 °C), our light intensity was lower and on average lasted
the duration of the 3 min we tested. This evidence supports
our claim because as the temperature increased, so did the
intensity of the light. The increased temperature also had an
inverse relationship with the duration of the light, because
as the temperature increased, the duration decreased.
As temperature increases, the kinetic energy of the molecules
within the reaction system increases, therefore increasing the
amount of collisions within the reactionincreasing the
intensity of the light. Since the reaction is sped up with
the increased temperature, the light burns more brightly, but Figure 5. Histogram and descriptive statistics of student performance
doesn’t last as long, causing the decrease in the duration of on the evidence-based argument for the chemiluminescence project.
The rubric for scoring the students’ responses can be found in the
the reaction at increased temperatures.
Supporting Information.
As can be seen from the example, students are not only able
to correctly identify the relationships between temperature explain the phenomena they observe at the macroscopic level.
and the duration and intensity of the reaction but also to pro- The rubric used to score the student responses has been
vide a molecular-level causal mechanism to explain why the included in the Supporting Information.

■
observed phenomenon occurred. When we investigated the
performance of all enrolled students on this evidence-based
argument (Figure 5), we found that most of the students scored HAZARDS
7.5 points or higher, suggesting not only that the students are Students are required to wear safety goggles and protective
successful in completing the lab but also that they have an gloves throughout the experiment. As part of the planning pro-
understanding of what is happening at the molecular level to cess, students are required to read and summarize the MSDSs
E DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00628
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Journal of Chemical Education
for all of the chemicals used, and these should be made avail-
able in lab or online. All of the reagents and solvents should be
considered hazardous or irritating upon contact or inhalation.
The organic solvents used are potential fire hazards. All of the
waste disposal should be done in compliance with local require-
ments.
■
ASSOCIATED CONTENT
*
S Supporting Information
The Supporting Information is available on the ACS
Publications website at DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00628.
The full laboratory project, chemical and preparation
information, the additional practices criteria, and the
grading rubric for the evidence-based arguments (PDF,
DOCX)
■
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*E-mail: jcarmel@chemistry.msu.edu.
ORCID
Justin H. Carmel: 0000-0001-9281-3751
Melanie M. Cooper: 0000-0002-7050-8649
Notes
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
■
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank the teaching assistants and students in the general
chemistry lab course that completed the lab and the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute for funding (Award 52008102).
■
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