Leeds Lab Educators

It was really exciting to see the experiments and workshops working by getting students to 'think like scientists' and applying their knowledge of organic chemistry in the way a researcher would do.

We've been able to show that students are learning key skills and have a positive impact on their development. We also think we've helped to shift the focus of undergrad labs to have more experimental design and inquiry as part of the curriculum. It's also been great to see other universities implement more open-ended experiments in their laboratory curricula over recent years.

One of the biggest challenges is the uncertainty around whether students can do this type of work because there was not a lot of precedent for formally teaching students these types of skills and getting students to do open-ended experiments in 1st year.

This work will help the development of our students into becoming scientists, so this will have an impact on the research our students will do in the latter parts of the degree and after graduation. Our students will apply what they learn to projects such as the development of new medicines and materials.

We're all motivated by improving the education of our students. We all recognise how important undergraduate laboratories are to the education of chemistry students, and want to make sure students can learn as much from this part of the degree as possible whether they go into a chemistry-related job or into another profession.

We're interested in teaching students how to apply other aspects of chemistry to design experiments in the field of physical and analytical chemistry. This will help students prepare for research in other disciplines.

We're all immensely proud and honoured to have received this prize. We hope it helps to shine a light of the type of work we are doing so that other Universities consider using similar methods for teaching their students.