Day 7 - Discrepant Events and Teamwork

Several different activities completed today...following a Q&A session about yesterday's lab and the write-up that is due tomorrow, the class was broken into two teams and asked to explain a discrepant event.  After asking some questions and formulating some hypotheses, students were given the task of using SDS sheets to determine which of 3 possibilities the "mystery liquid" could be.  After a discussion of how differences (rather than similarities) are useful analytically for identifying unknowns or separating components of a mixture, the true identity of the mystery liquid was revealed.

To end class (and as a precursor to our first POGIL activity), students were given a task of making a drawing from a set of verbal instructions; they then rate their confidence in the accuracy of the individual product on a scale of 1-10 (class average confidence level was 3.25).  Next, students were told to work in their teams to create the same drawing, using only their original drawings as reference and any directions they wrote down; they were then asked to rate their confidence in the accuracy of the group product on a scale of 1-10 (class average confidence level was 7.19).  Time was running short, so students were asked to think about what were the barriers you encountered that prevented you from being more confident with the quality of your work?