Should You Use Inquiry & Problem-Solving Laboratories?

by Janet Lanza
Biology Department and Arkansas STRIVE Program
University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Inquiry. Problem solving. Look in any current issue of a science teaching journal or lab book
and you will find these terms frequently. Talk to me and you’ll hear me enthuse about how
inquiry and problem-solving labs interest students and help them learn?and, just as
importantly, how they’re fun to teach. My experiences are consistent with a variety of studies
that show that these approaches are effective in helping students learn content and improve
their thinking and analytical skills (NRC, 2000).

A variety of experiences led me to teaching with inquiry and problem-solving: teaching labs,
mentoring undergraduate researchers, taking workshops, reading the National Science
Education Standards (NRC, 1996), and directing a summer program for pre-college teachers.
Then, I was responsible for developing labs for a new, first-year, college course, ?
Evolutionary and Environmental Biology.? I couldn’t find a lab book that met my
requirements, so I developed my own (Lanza, 2005).

My philosophy in laboratory exercises is simple: to understand science, people must do

science. I think laboratory exercises should be designed to provide students with
opportunities to develop and conduct original work. However, we can’t tell a neophyte ?
develop and conduct a project.? The field is too wide open. To assist with that challenge, lab
exercises should narrow the field and help students see where possible projects lie. If we give
them a little background information and help them see variables that they can manipulate
and measure or problems they can study, they can develop and conduct their own projects.
What follows are the insights I have gained from teaching inquiry and problem-solving
laboratories.

What are Inquiry and Problem Solving?

To me, inquiry labs ideally ask students to design a question as well as the methods for
answering that question. With topics for which the methods are self-evident or very simple,
this ideal situation can be achieved. For example, if an exercise merely requires the
measurement of temperature to generate data, students are easily able to develop methods in
this laboratory exercise.

In other situations, methods must be provided to students because the methods are not readily
apparent to the neophyte. For example, the methods for sampling plant diversity via quadrats
are well known. It would be silly and a waste of time to ask students to devise such methods
on their own. But the questions that students can answer using those methods are un-ending.
In this case, the logical approach is to present the methods to students and let them devise
their own questions. This approach is fine as long as the presentation of the lab ensures that
student groups can develop and perform different projects.

Problem solving represents a rather different approach, more akin to planning or engineering.
In these labs, students are given a complex task that can be solved in more than one way and
they use scientific knowledge or principles to complete this task. Often local issues provide
natural springboards for this kind of exercise.
Why Use Inquiry and Problem-solving Laboratories?
In the 1990’s several independent documents assessed the state of science education in the
United States and recommended reforms. For example, Project 2061, organized by the
American Association for the Advancement for Science, wrote in Science for All Americans
(Rutherford and Ahlgren, 1990. p. xvii) “[Science educational methods] emphasize the
learning of answers more than the exploration of questions, memory at the expense of critical
thought, bits and pieces of information instead of understandings in context, recitation over
argument, reading in lieu of doing. [Science educational methods] fail to encourage students
to work together, to share ideas and information freely with each other, or to use modern
instruments to extend their intellectual capabilities.” Benchmarks for Science Literacy
(American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993), also produced by Project
2061, outlined minimum core knowledge in mathematics, science, and technology that all
students at given grade levels should have. In 1996, the National Resource Council published
the National Science Education Standards and echoed the same arguments. These national
standards bring a ?big picture? look to science education and discuss teaching approach,
course content, teacher development, testing methods, and program development. All of these
major initiatives call for a changed approach to science education?one in which students have
creative input into their activities, rather than doing “cookbook” exercises totally designed by
someone else.

The National Science Education Standards strongly recommends increasing opportunities for
student creativity in science courses because this approach generates interest in science,
increases understanding and retention, and helps students learn to think and solve problems.
These gains will be especially important in the future because the problems facing society are
complex and large scale and because knowledge is changing so rapidly that we cannot teach
students all the factual material they will need to know. Instead, teachers must provide a
foundation for their learning in the future.

This approach is making greater inroads in pre-college than in college classrooms. In the
future, college students will expect fewer cookbook laboratory exercises and more exercises
that demand creativity.

Traditional biology laboratory exercises are ?hands-on? but not necessarily ?minds-on.? In
the most common lab format, students receive a set of directions, everyone in the class
follows those directions, and then everyone answers the same set of questions. Students
conduct several separate tasks in each laboratory session. These exercises are usually
designed to teach students specific pieces of information or some specific technique. In these
situations, students may follow directions, conduct laboratory exercises, and write answers in
a lab book without being mentally engaged in the activity. In other words, they may behave
like robots?doing but not thinking. In addition, students realize that there is one “right
answer” that they should “get.” In these situations, weak students can often be discouraged
because they don’t understand the significance of a project and good students can often “dry
lab” their results.

I would argue that many of these activities are actually demonstrations?not demonstrations
conducted by the instructor at the front of the room but demonstrations conducted by each
student at his or her desk. These activities were developed with the best intentions?they were
designed so that students could reliably get the ?right? results and grasp some biological
concept. Unfortunately, this approach is not succeeding for all students.
If, however, laboratory exercises are constructed so that there is no one “right” answer and
students can use their creativity, student interest increases. This approach gives students ?
ownership? over their activities. This approach also allows groups to tailor projects to their
varying backgrounds, knowledge, interests, and abilities. The two most important ways to
provide creative opportunities in laboratory exercises are to allow students to 1) design,
conduct, and analyze their own experiments, and 2) research and propose solutions to
complex problems that are presented to them. Students respond enthusiastically to these
approaches. During the course of participating in these types of labs students learn content,
develop an understanding of how scientists ask questions and solve problems, and increase
their abilities to analyze problems, interpret data, and make recommendations.

A secondary result of student creativity and interest is that labs are more enjoyable for
instructors! It’s fun to teach students who are enthusiastic and learning how to teach
themselves. In addition, new groups have new ideas to test, so something is new every
semester. Faculty learn in this situation too!

The best reason for using inquiry and problem-solving labs is that students like them and
learn from them. My inquiry and problem-solving labs have been very well received by my
students and they perform well.

Should You Use Inquiry and Problem-solving Labs?

Before you decide to incorporate the inquiry and problem-solving approaches in your labs,
you need to ask yourself several questions.

Can/should everything be taught via inquiry and problem solving?

The answer to this question is clearly ?no.? Inquiry takes time. Lecture and more structured
lab activities have their place in our teaching. But I think we need to shift the balance that
most students experience in our courses. They need more opportunity to be creative and
affect their own learning.

Am I willing to ?cover? fewer topics in lab so that my students can learn more depth on
the remaining topics and so that they can learn the process of science?
In most traditional lab courses, we cover a new topic each week (how to use a microscope,
osmosis and diffusion, enzyme action, mitosis, etc.). Then we give a quiz the following week
or a practical several weeks later. Ask yourself how much your students learn with this
approach. At a maximum, they learn a little bit about each of the topics. But there is not
enough time for students to develop an in-depth understanding of a topic. Furthermore, there
is no time for students to design and conduct experiments?in short, no time to experience the
scientific process.

For me, the answer to the above question is an easy ?yes.? I think we better serve students
when we help them learn in depth and when we allow them to experience the process of
question asking and answering. There is so much knowledge available now that we can’t
cram everything important into a student’s head in one semester. Furthermore, our knowledge
of the biological world is growing at an ever-increasing rate. So, because I know I can’t make
a student learn every bit of valuable information and because I think an understanding of the
process of science will help my students evaluate information after they leave my class, I use
fewer but longer (two- and three-week) labs that are open-ended and require students to make
decisions about what they learn. At least some studies are showing that this approach leads to
better learning and greater retention (Lord, T. 1998).
Your answers may, of course, differ from mine. Different answers are especially likely to
arise depending on whether you are teaching prospective biology majors, people who will
never see the inside of a lab again, or a class that is a mixture of both types of students. But I
encourage you to think about what is essential to your students and what they will retain after
they receive a grade from you.

How important is it for my students to understand the scientific process?

An important objective in many first-year college biology courses is to help students
understand the ?nature of science.? If, as I argue above, many lab activities are really
demonstrations, our current labs cannot really teach the question-asking and -answering
nature of science.

If it is important for your students to understand the nature of science, you need to use class
time for that purpose. Probably the best way to teach the process of science is to have
students conduct a detailed research project?but this approach is clearly impractical in all but
the smallest classes. Some courses allow students to conduct an experiment at the end of the
semester. This practice is, I think, a good start but is not really enough.

I think the best compromise is to have student groups conduct several, short experiments over
the course of the semester. Students can learn to design, conduct, and analyze experiments.
Usually, students in my classes design, analyze, and interpret experiments better ?the second
time around.?

How important are specific bits of information and is lab the appropriate place for
teaching the important bits?
Many labs that I have read (and taught) seek to teach information that is non-essential. For
example, why are we teaching the names of parts of a microscope to non-majors, people who
will probably never use a microscope again? Yes, teaching them how to operate a microscope
is important if we want them to see cells, but we should view the microscope as a tool to use,
not as an object important in and of itself. What about our majors or prospective majors? The
answer to this question is more difficult. Of course, one answer is that this group needs to
learn this material. In that case, use the lab that teaches the parts of the microscope. Another
answer is to delay teaching names of microscope parts until a later course when the students
use a microscope more frequently than is often the case in a first-year course.

For me, the important pieces of information are big ideas rather than small details. For
example, if I am teaching photosynthesis, I think students need to know that plants use CO2,
water, and sunlight to produce sugars and O2. In one currently available lab book, students
conduct three activities relating to photosynthesis: they extract, chromatograph, and look at
photosynthetic pigments; they watch a color change of water surrounding Elodea as the plant
absorbs CO2 from the water during photosynthesis and the pH changes from acidic to basic;
they watch bubbles of O2 being given off by Elodea in bright light. In all of these cases, the
students are told what to do and they watch some phenomenon; they are then supposed to
believe that the observation meant what the lab book implied. I guess I don’t care that
everyone in the lab realizes that there are different pigments or that absorption of CO2
changes the pH from acidic to basic. I would be satisfied if some students really learned that
too much light and too little light can reduce photosynthetic rates while other students really
learned that lack of CO2 reduces photosynthetic rates, and that still other students really
learned something else. Therefore, I would prefer an approach in which student groups can
choose to manipulate one environmental variable that might affect photosynthesis and then
measure the effect of their manipulation. Groups could choose to manipulate light intensity,
light wavelength, temperature, water availability, O2 concentration, or CO2 concentration.
They could then measure photosynthetic rate by monitoring O2 or CO2 concentration. The
basic important information is used as the basis for the student-generated projects. If students
then listen to oral reports from other groups, the important message comes through again and
again. They also see experiments, the strengths and weaknesses of those experiments, the
need for replication, and the effects of manipulating different variables on the rate of
photosynthesis.

How important are specific techniques and can those techniques be taught in the
context of answering a question?
Some laboratory exercises seek to simply teach students how to conduct a technique.
Imagine, for example, deciding that it was important for your students to know how to
conduct quadrat analyses of plants. You could simply have students use quadrats to measure
tree species abundances. To me, this is a descriptive, question-less approach to teaching a
useful technique. I think a better tack to take is to let students use quadrats to collect data
with a specific question in mind. Sample questions might be: Does habitat type affect species
abundances? Does patch size affect species abundances? Do different size quadrats affect
abundance estimates? (However, I would let student groups develop their own questions.)

I recommend examining a laboratory exercise very closely when the focus is on a technique
and asking how that technique relates to important biological questions. To mutilate the
famous quote of T. Dobzhansky, I would assert, ?Techniques mean nothing, except in the
light of questions.?

Do I need very small classes?

No! I recommend approximately 16-24 students per lab section, with 20 students as the ideal
class size. Twelve students are too few because project topics will not be as diverse as in a
larger section and students will not learn as much from their peers. You may want to start
teaching inquiry labs with 16 students per laboratory until you are comfortable with this
teaching style. If you have a student assistant who has taken the lab and is comfortable
helping other students, I think you can have lab classes as large as 30.

How much time and money does this approach require?

Contrary to my expectations, I find inquiry and problem-solving labs surprisingly economical
in terms of both time and money expenditure. Of course, implementing new labs for the first
time has both time and money costs. You may need to purchase new equipment or supplies.
Many of the supplies used in my exercises are inexpensive and can be purchased at grocery
stores, hobby shops, and home improvement stores. Nonetheless, you will need to spend time
gathering these supplies.

After the exercises have been implemented once, preparation time is substantially reduced
and is probably not significantly different from that of a standard lab. Keeping the supplies
segregated for each lab will reduce the prep time. Prep time will be increased if you let
students request materials that are not available immediately (you will have to run all over the
department to get what they need). For the first few semesters you teach inquiry labs, you
may want to allow students to request additional materials; this policy would give you
suggestions for materials to have on hand in the future. Subsequently, you may wish to
restrict projects to those that can be conducted with the available materials.
Grading inquiry and problem solving takes about the same amount of time as a standard lab.
Rubrics speed up the grading process (they also help maintain consistency among
instructors). If you use rubrics to grade oral presentations, all your grading is completed
during laboratory time. If you use rubrics to grade poster presentations, grading time is about
the same as for grading quizzes. When you grade only the projects, you have no time invested
in writing quizzes or setting up and grading practicals.

Can everyone teach this type of laboratory exercise?

Yes, at least anyone with the right assistance and attitude. Faculty trying inquiry labs need to
be open to experimentation. Faculty need to be aware that some students will need ?coaxing.?
Four other faculty members and three teaching assistants at UALR have successfully taught
the exercises I developed; they have been helped by the instructor manual that I wrote for
each of my lab exercises. The instructor manual provides guidance on experimental design,
safety concerns, potential projects, data analysis, potential problems, and needed supplies.

*****

To summarize, I’d say that inquiry and problem-solving labs work very well for me. Students
find my labs interesting and that means I like using them. These kinds of labs help my
students learn to think and analyze?important tools in their futures. Furthermore, these labs
are economical in terms of supplies and time investment.

Obviously, I can’t answer the original question of whether you should use inquiry and
problem-solving in your labs. But I hope I’ve helped answer some of your questions and that
you’ll give it a try!

Literature Cited
American Association for the Advancement of Science. 1993. Benchmarks for Science
Literacy. Oxford University Press, New York.

Lanza, Janet. 2005. New Designs for Bio-Explorations. Second Edition. Benjamin
Cummings, San Francisco, California. Available with a detailed Instructors manual.

Lord, T. 1998. Cooperative learning that really works in biology teaching. The American
Biology Teacher 60:580-588.

National Research Council. 1996. National Science Education Standards. National Academy
Press, Washington, D.C.

Rutherford, F. James, and Andrew Ahlgren. 1991. Science for All Americans. Oxford
University Press, New York.

Excerpted from Instructor’s Guide for New Designs for Bio-Explorations, by Janet
Lanza. Printed with permission from the author.

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