European Journal of Engineering Education

Vol. 37, No. 2, May 2012, 117123

Promoting higher order thinking skills using inquiry-based
learning
G.V. Madhuri
a
*, V.S.S.N Kantamreddi
a
and L.N.S. Prakash Goteti
b
a
Department of Chemistry, GITAM University, Hyderabad Campus, Andhra Pradesh 502329, India;
b
Mahindra Satyam, Kompally, Hyderabad, India
(Received 30 July 2011; nal version received 1 December 2011)
Active learning pedagogies play an important role in enhancing higher order cognitive skills among the
student community. In this work, a laboratory course for rst year engineering chemistry is designed and
executed using an inquiry-based learning pedagogical approach. The goal of this module is to promote
higher order thinking skills in chemistry. Laboratory exercises are designed based on Blooms taxonomy
and a just-in-time facilitation approach is used. A pre-laboratory discussion outlining the theory of the
experiment and its relevance is carried out to enable the students to analyse real-life problems. The perfor-
mance of the students is assessed based on their ability to perform the experiment, design new experiments
and correlate practical utility of the course module with real life. The novelty of the present approach
lies in the fact that the learning outcomes of the existing experiments are achieved through establishing a
relationship with real-world problems.
Keywords: inquiry based learning; higher order thinking skills; Blooms taxonomy; experiment; real-life
context
1. Introduction
Active learning pedagogies that promote higher order thinking skills (HOTS) play an important
role in the engineering education system. The students joining the colleges or universities come
from diversied cultural and prior knowledge backgrounds. One of the challenges in imparting
practical transferable skills pertaining to science subjects is that individuals adopt behavioural
strategies to complete the tasks (or experiments) assigned. In the process, inquiry and HOTS are
affected. This work focuses on a rst year engineering chemistry laboratory course to address
some of these challenges.
In a traditional chemistry laboratory course, the students performexperiments with the help of a
laboratory manual, wherein each step of the experimental procedure is described and is referred to
as recipe lab (Domin 1999). The major limitation of this approach is the gap between the specic
learning outcomes and their relevance to social knowledge construction. Another aspect of such
a didactic approach is that it might not help in knowledge transfer in promoting HOTS among
*Corresponding author. Email: madhuri@gitam.edu
ISSN 0304-3797 print/ISSN 1469-5898 online
2012 SEFI
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2012.661701
http://www.tandfonline.com
118 G.V. Madhuri et al.
the student community. HOTS consists of three components, namely: meta-components; perfor-
mance components; knowledge acquisition components (Sternberg 1995) Also, as Johnstone and
colleagues (Johnstone et al. 1998, Johnstone and Al-Shuaili 2001) commented: students can be
successful in their laboratory class even with little understanding of what they are actually doing.
In a conventional class room based environment, the scope might be little for the students to use
their thought process and ingenuity. To overcome this and to initiate the process of inquiry in
the students mind, a pre-lab session is conducted in the class, where concepts pertaining to the
experiment are placed for an open discussion.
Inquiry is the ability to think and work scientically and is recommended by science and
education leaders around the world (Miller and Osborne 1998, AAAS 2001, DEST 2002). Sci-
entically minded people are vital to science, technology and society because they are curious,
forever trying to make sense of the world around them and they become lifelong learners. Hence,
it is very important that education is taught in a way to impart HOTS, enabling students to make
personal, social and economic decisions. The purpose of adapting inquiry-based learning in an
undergraduate chemistry laboratory course is to impart HOTS by developing a students practical
and transferable skills, content knowledge and scientic understanding. The novelty of the present
approach lies in the fact that the methodology has been implemented to the existing course module
without changing experiments by adapting the experience of faculty.
Table 1. Example of questionnaire developed for inquiry-based learning
Sl# Question description
1 What is the difference between qualitative analysis and quantitative anaysis?
2 What are the differences between normality, molarity, molality?
3 What is the difference between end point and stoichiometric point?
4 What is primary standard and secondary standard?
5 What is the difference between reagents laboratory, general and analytical?
6 What is the difference between the direct and indirect titrations?
7 What are indicators and how do we know which indicator to be used in a given specic titration?
8 What is the difference between macro, micro and semi micro scale?
9 Oxidation and reduction how they are important for the titrations?
10 Why is calibration needed for sceintic apparatus?
Figure 1. Inquiry based unit of work ow chart. lab = laboratory; HOTS = higher order thinking skills.
European Journal of Engineering Education 119
This paper reports how meaningful learning of chemistry has taken place by means of inquiry-
based learning. The results reect that the students develop critical thinking, problem-solving
ability and integration of knowledge (Table 1 and Figure 1 illustrate this point). The transfer of
specic skills and knowledge areas identied in the course is noticed through real-life problems
such as measuring hardness of water, estimation of zinc in multi-vitamin tablets, estimation of
calcium in cement, etc. The paper discusses how inquiry-based methodology is used for the
chemistry laboratory course and the results are discussed in from perspective of imparting HOTS
among the student community.
2. Methodology
The present laboratory course deals with analytical chemistry. It focuses on quantitative analysis
in general and volumetric analysis in particular. Due to paramount pressure on students at +2
levels to enter into premier engineering institutions, they learn chemistry and physics by rote,
in particular neglecting laboratory work. Hence, it may be fairly assumed that relevant prior
knowledge of the students is minimal in terms of laboratory skills. Chemistry contains so much
information that students might experience difculty in nding, understanding and assimilating
the concepts that are vital.
Inquiry can identify the relevant concepts that need to be understood, enabling the students
to integrate knowledge-establishing patterns and thereby design new experiments. For the same
class, the facilitator taught non-conventional sources of energy based on problem-based learning.
(Madhuri and Goteti 2011). In this aspect the teachers and text books are important resources.
There is an introductory discussion highlighting important concepts, namely: (i) units for con-
centration; (ii) primary standard and secondary standard; (iii) apparatus needed; (iv) indicators;
(v) oxidation; (vi) grades of chemicals available. These concepts are disseminated using a just-in
time manner (Appleton 1993). Inquiry-based learning is based on student motivation and prior
knowledge. Table 1 describes a sample inquiry form.
2.1. Work ow
In order to (i) create curiosity and the motivation needed to perform the experiment, (ii) integrate
the learning for social knowledge construction thereby enabling students to use the skills and
knowledge gained in real life, the following work ow is used in conducting each experiment:
A context for the experiment to be performed in the laboratory is developed with regard to
phenomena, technical applications and their relevance to real life.
There is a pre-laboratory discussion to assist the participants by posing relevant questions (such
as, for example, estimation of iron in a given material) and facilitating a thought process among
the students to observe, plan, execute and interpret the results as part of their ndings.
There is a laboratory session to enable the students to develop the following: technical skills;
observational skills; awareness of safety; recording data interpretation; report writing.
An assessment based on both pre-laboratory and laboratory sessions.
The individual steps of execution connected with the expected skills of higher order cognition
(Boyeena et al. 2010, 2011, Vignan 2011) is shown in Figure 1. The conventional way of teaching
a similar course is lacking, in terms of connecting the theory and its relevance to the experiment
to be performed. To enable a meaningful execution of the experiments, an observation sheet is
designed, which each student is instructed to ll in and use during practical sessions. This process
facilitates understanding of the relevant theoretical concepts to perform the experiment.
120 G.V. Madhuri et al.
2.2. Grading in laboratory sessions
These experiments were primarily based on quantitative analysis. For example, the students had
to report the amount of a substance present in a given 100 ml of solution following the procedure
discussed in the pre-laboratory session. In the laboratory session, students perform the experi-
ment and carry out the necessary calculations to arrive at a numerical value for the amount of
the substance present in the given 100 ml solution. These results are presented in their reports.
These were cross checked with exact given amounts and the students were asked to calculate the
percentage of error. Grades were awarded based on their % of error as given below:
00.01% O grade.
Above 0.01% and up to 0.1%A+ grade.
Above 0.11% and up to 0.2%A grade.
Above 0.2% and up to 0.3% B+ grade.
Above 0.3% and up to 0.4% B grade.
Above 0.4% C grade.
The students who are absent for a given laboratory session are awarded an AB grade. The
performance component of the students in ve laboratory sessions is given in Figure 2. Grades of
the students may be aligned to their ability to perform the experiment meaningfully and suggests
that they could use the knowledge that was imparted to them during the pre-laboratory session.
It also reects that the present approach helps the participants to develop laboratory skills. For
example, around 11% of the population attended the laboratories in experiment 1 and could
achieve accuracy up to 0.1%. The numbers are for the remaining four experiments and stand
around 44%, 29%, 67% and 31% respectively. One of the challenges that was noticed in the
process was during the execution of experiment 5. The students were not as involved and could
not contribute much compared to the rest of the laboratory sessions as it was scheduled towards
the end of the semester. The activities at the semester end also had a signicant inuence on this
aspect.
Figure 2. Performance (in terms of grades) of students during laboratory sessions.
European Journal of Engineering Education 121
2.3. Assessment mapping with HOTS
The post-laboratory sessions are designed in such a way that there is a progressive develop-
ment of the concepts, techniques and skills. This is to maximise the potential for learning and
harness higher order cognition skills such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The mastery
over the concepts learnt enables the students to build the ability of designing the experiments. A
post-laboratory session is conducted in the form of a questionnaire based on the pre-laboratory
and laboratory sessions for each experiment. Performance during the post-laboratory session
reects the fact that deep learning and the development of critical thinking has taken place,
may be not in all the students but whoever has performed well both in the laboratory and post-
laboratory sessions. Table 2 describes the mapping of specic questions to individual components
of HOTS. Figure 3 depicts the marks obtained by the students in the post-laboratory session of
each experiment.
Table 2. Examples of questions contributing to higher order thinking skills (HOTS) components
Category Question description HOTS component addressed
Concept What is the type of reaction that takes place between
Fe
2+
and KMnO
4
?
Learning new information
Analytical In Na
2
CO
3
vs. HCl each mole of CO
2
3
requires how
many moles of acid?
Performance component; new
analytical skills are attained
Understanding Why is H
2
SO
4
added to the iron sample before titration? Planning, decision making
Social knowledge I have a commercial soda ash sample with different
percentages of Na
2
CO
3
, (90%, 80%, 99% and 75%).
Give their rating from grade 1 to grade 4?
Integration of knowledge
applying and analysing
Experimental design In a village the water in the well is hard. Can soda ash
be added to it? If yes, what is the precipitate that is
formed?
Evaluating, planning and
execution
Figure 3. Performance of students in post-laboratory sessions.
122 G.V. Madhuri et al.
3. Discussion and conclusions
In this work, inquiry-based learning of a chemistry laboratory course is executed. The process
comprises context, pre-laboratory, laboratory and post-laboratory sessions. All the pre-laboratory
post-laboratory sessions were designed and conducted successfully.
Understanding scientic concepts and developing abilities of inquiry had taken place.
Integration of scientic knowledge with regard to social perspective is emphasised.
It can be noted from the grading process that most of the students are in the category of A+
and B grades in most of the experiments, suggesting that the execution happened in an active
environment and the knowledge transfer from theory to practice.
One of the challenges in the conduct of the students is signicant absenteeism due to local
disturbances.
Some of the students who secured OandA+ grades performed well, both in laboratory sessions
and post-laboratory assessments. Some of them have demonstrated interest in identifying the
estimation of zinc in multi-vitamin tables. Most of the students performed the estimation of
hardness of ground water brought from their respective environment. This reects the effec-
tiveness of the current approach in enabling the students to construct social knowledge. The
students could also gain awareness on how analytical chemistry inuences various walks of
life. For example, the students could assess which pathological laboratory is good in terms of
the nature of reagents that are being used there.
From the post-laboratory assessments, it was observed that constructivist learning had taken
place because most of the students were in the range of 69 marks on a 10-mark scale. As
shown in Figure 3, the percentage of people who scored above 7 marks stands at 90%, 30%,
48%, 22% and 63% respectively.
This study suggests that the present inquiry-based pedagogy has better proved outcomes com-
pared to a conventional recipe lab approach. Some of the students lack motivation and this is
particularly attributed to the wrong notion that chemistry is not relevant to the engineering disci-
pline as they study it for only two semesters out of eight. This experience can be more effective if
it is integrated with problem-based learning. These results are signicant especially in terms of the
performance of participants to conduct systematic and accurate experiments. Enhancing the per-
formance quotient of the class can be signicantly inuenced by such inquiry-based approaches.
In addition, they enable participants to appreciate the importance and relevance of the concepts in
terms of real-life problems. Similar work needs to be carried out in other relevant disciplines, such
as mathematics and physics, to inculcate holistic thinking among participants to apply the concepts
they learn in day-to-day real-life situations, thereby enabling them to become lifelong learners.
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About the authors
G.V. Madhuri received her PhD in Chemistry from Osmania University. She has seven years of research experience and
six years of teaching experience at graduate and post graduate level. She is currently working as an Assistant Professor in
chemistry at GITAM University, Hyderabad, where she is implementing inquiry-based learning, problem-based learning
and activity-based learning methodologies.
V.S.S.N. Kantamreddi received his PhD in Chemistry from University of Bradford, UK. He has seven years of research
and industrial experience and four years of teaching experience. He is currently working as an Assistant Professor in
chemistry at GITAM University, Hyderabad.
L.N.S. Prakash Goteti received his Ph.D. from the University of Hyderabad, India. His work is centered on the peripheral
area of computing and applied material science specic to Ion Solid Interactions. He has 15 years of combined experience
in terms of research, teaching and industry. He is also co-author of a book on Java Programming Language with Pearson
Education, New Delhi, along with Ken Arnold, Davis Holmes and Games Gosling. He is currently with Technology
Learning Services, Mahindra Satyam, Hyderabad, India as Subject Matter ExpertTesting and Java Technologies. His
research interests include curriculum innovation and outcome based education specic to Software Engineering and
Computer Science.
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