Krystyniak and Heikkinen10 compared the verbal interactions
involving a single lab team during structured general chemistry
labs and extended open-inquiry investigations at the university
level. Their results revealed a decrease in student−instructor
interactions concerning procedures and data recording and an
increase of conversations related to lab safety and data analysis
in the context of open inquiry. Participants in this study also
talked less about chemistry concepts while engaged in the more
open investigations. This outcome was attributed to the high
familiarity that the students had with the concepts targeted by
the more open-ended experiments. These authors observed
that students sought less instructor guidance during the openinquiry
than the noninquiry lab activities. These latter results
are consistent with findings from other researchers that indicate
that students gain independence from their instructor while
involved in open-inquiry investigations.20 Besides the results of
these investigations, little is known about how the level of
inquiry affects social processing and cognitive processing in
college science laboratories. This knowledge is necessary to
identify essential characteristics of experimental tasks that
promote the types of interactions known to foster high levels of
intellectual engagement and meaningful learning.14−16 Thus, we
designed the present qualitative study to increase our
knowledge in this area.