In recent years, there has been a major push in science education to transform traditional laboratory education by incorporating inquiry-based lab work. By including inquiry-based activities in the lab, the assumption is that students will increase their scientific literacy and build creative problem-solving abilities through a more challenging curriculum than is offered through traditional cookbook activities. However, there has been little assessment to determine whether inquiry-based labs achieve these goals with greater success than traditional labs. During fall 2006 and spring 2007 we administered pre- and post- assessments in both traditional and inquiry introductory biology labs for non-majors to more than 300 students. These assessments were used to measure differential change in science literacy, science process skills, and students’ self-confidence in doing biology. The instruments used for the assessment were modified from previously validated instruments and were retested for reliability. To assess students’ self confidence, we used a previously validated college biology self-efficacy instrument for non-majors.
Results/Conclusions
Using these assessments, we discovered that students in inquiry labs had significantly greater gains across both semesters in science literacy and science process skills than students in traditional labs. Interestingly, students’ self-reported responses of their confidence in doing science varied across semesters, with generally higher self-confidence for students in the traditional cookbook labs. The anticipated outcomes of this study are to gain perspective on the relationship between inquiry-based learning, science literacy, and student self-confidence in doing science, and provide valuable information for future laboratories at our own and other universities.
