Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThe University of Utah's general education chemistry curriculum has necessarily omitted a student laboratory experience due mainly to time, cost, and facility limitations. The main objective of this study was the develop and assess a series of instructional television laboratories to achieve in some degree the purposes of the traditional laboratory experience. It was hypothesized that (1) the students could gain an appreciation of the experimental nature of chemistry, (2) the video tapes would create a favorable response from the students while maintaining achievement in academic content, and (3) the students viewing the laboratory tapes would not achieve significantly better than students who did not view the tapes. A search of the literature revealed little significant research concerning instructional television laboratories at the college level. Five color video laboratories, each of about thirty minutes in length, were initially produced and used with general education chemistry classes in 1971. Final editions of the tapes were developed in response to student and faculty evaluations and were used with classes in 1972 along with two additional tapes. The main instructional strategies used were discovery approach, analogy through the use of models, and lecture demonstrations. Visual aids were used to compensate for the lack of psychomotor experience, tasting, and smelling. The techniques to assess effectiveness of the tapes were (1) student questionnaires, (2) a panel of experts, and (3) a statistical analysis of student achievement in the course and performance on laboratory sheets which accompanied the video tapes. The major effort in the study was the development of the tapes which covered the following areas and activities : format, concepts, student background, standard of quality, visual aids, instructional level, learning aids, continuity, relevance, and tape improvement, The evidence from the findings support the following major conclusions of this study: 1. The hypothesis that a general education student can gain an appreciation of the experimental nature of chemistry seem to have been achieved to at least some degree. The indications for this are (1) the percentage of students recommending these tapes to the next class, (2) the improvement trends of revised tapes compared to the initial version, (3) the individual tape rating by the student, and (4) the favorable responses by the panel of experts. 2. The hypothesis that instructional television can be developed to create a favorable response by the students while maintaining a standard level of sophistication in academic content in the course also seems to have been achieved. The evidence for this is the content evaluation by the panel of experts and the appraisal by the course instructors. 3. The hypothesis that there would not be any significant difference in achievement as measured by chemistry tests between groups that were exposed to the tapes and groups that were not, was validated by t-Test results. 4. The results of this study tent to support the contention that instructional quality can be continually improved. Continuing feedback from different sources in this study demonstrated in a quantitative way that quality can be improved and would imply that higher level of performance could continue with each use of this type of analysis. 5. Although this study did not include an analysis of laboratory skills, the experience with the laboratory sheets seems to indicate that the students vicariously proceeded through the usual steps of the inductive approach. 6. The experience of this study suggests that teaching improvement can be enhanced by analysis of teacher performance using the approaches suggested here which are similar to micro-teaching. The tapes are available upon request through the author