We are one of many universities nationwide who have adopted an inquiry lab curriculum
for their introductory courses (Sundberg, et al. 2005). However, we are one of very few
who have systematically assessed the efficacy of this curriculum in comparison to more
traditional lab curriculum. Rissing and Cogan (2009) found significant gains in student
performance and attitudes when students participated in an inquiry enzyme laboratory,
however, their study was limited to assessing one lab in an entire semester. Our results
take into account the experience of students working in an inquiry based laboratory
experience for an entire semester. Having clearly defined our instruction as a “guided
inquiry” approach, we showed that students in our inquiry labs demonstrated a significant
improvement in science literacy skills and process skills, consistent with the manner in
which an average citizen would use them: 4% and 2% greater gains, respectively (Figures 1
and 2). At first glance, these gains may seem small considering that students in the inquiry
labs spent substantially more time reading popular reports of science, designing their own experiments, and evaluating the results of their experiments in writing compared to the
students in the traditional labs.