Effects of an Active Learning Environment: Teaching Innovations at a Research I Institution

This paper describes a new approach for teaching general chemistry that combines lecture and laboratory into one seamless session and incorporates instructional methods supported by research-based findings. The results of a study that compared two instructional formats, conventional passive lecture and the student-centered, highly collaborative format known as cAcL2 (concept Advancement through chemistry Lab–Lecture), are also presented. Factors carefully controlled in this study include content material, time of day, time on task, and test format, scheduling, and grading. The results of the analysis of variance and the evaluation of the means conclude that the cAcL2 instructional method had a positive effect on student performance in an introductory chemistry class.