(253f) From Following to Developing: A New Approach to Student-Developed Lab Manuals for Unit Operation Laboratory Courses

Laboratory courses in general, and unit operation laboratory courses in particular are very crucial in the chemical engineering curriculum, as they present the best direct demonstration of many theoretical principles and phenomena. Accordingly, high attention has been given to the effective teaching and delivering methods related to these courses. At the heart of the laboratory courses is the lab manual, which provides the necessary background and instructions for students to successfully perform their lab experiments, hence obtaining the expected outcomes. However, lab manuals are usually developed by the course instructors in a similar fashion to lecture notes, while considering the lab-specific nature and students' knowledge level. In the current work, we have explored the potential of having the lab manual developed by students themselves, i.e., a student-developed lab manual, so students are developing rather than following the lab manual. We have asked a group of senior students to work on developing a lab manual for a newly introduced experiment, which is to be incorporated into the curriculum for the semester to follow. A lab setup for the demonstration of adsorption/desorption through humidification/dehumidification of air on silica gel has been chosen for this purpose. The students have been provided with the manual for the different components of the lab setup, and the main outlines for the experimental objectives. Then students were asked to develop the experiment manual to fully explore the process and the effect of different operating variables on the process output. The experiment manual developed by students has undergone several review rounds with the lab instructor and lab coordinators to provide constructive feedback to improve the manual quality and make sure that fundamental experiment objectives are clearly communicated. Furthermore, the procedure must be correct and in proper order with no confusion for the safe operation of the equipment. The observations have revealed that students have been able to generally develop a good preliminary experiment manual at an acceptable level. However, this manual has to undergo a rigorous and iterative review process with in-depth feedback and input from the course instructor. Meanwhile, it was found that the student’s developed manual is generally simple and easy to understand as it uses terms and descriptions easy to absorb at the student's level of knowledge and understanding. The other main findings and observations are presented in this paper.