Does consulting open online educational resources to prepare for laboratory learning affect students' perception of their experimental self-efficacy and chemistry laboratory anxiety?

Abstract

Laboratory learning remains a pillar of analytical chemistry teaching, but students often arrive in the laboratory unprepared, especially being unaware of basic safety requirements or simple handling procedures. Consulting digital resources before the experimental sessions was reported to possibly improve their learning experience in the chemistry laboratory. Exploratory results suggested it improves students’ experimental self-efficacy with subsequent anxiety reduction, but there is a need of further investigating this aspect. We conducted a semi-quantitative study focusing on these two interrelated constructs in the context of chemistry laboratory teaching. Six small cohorts were considered in several teaching contexts (undergraduate and graduate) across three institutions, and students were invited to consult the open online CHIMACTIV website. When learners consult targeted resources on this website before the experimental sessions, they perceive an increase of their self-efficacy and a reduction of their anxiety in the chemistry laboratory. For self-efficacy, the higher effect was observed on the “understanding concepts” dimension, followed by the dimension “sufficiency of resources “. For anxiety, the higher benefit was noted for the dimension “using equipment and procedures” followed by “collecting data”. Comparable results were obtained across the different cohorts. The correlation coefficients between dimensions confirm a positive and significant relationship: reductions in chemistry laboratory anxiety are associated with increases in experimental self-efficacy. The strongest correlation was observed between the anxiety dimension “using equipment and procedures” and the self-efficacy dimension “sufficiency of resources.” These results suggest that students perceive online resources, such as the CHIMACTIV website, as contributing to their chemistry learning, particularly in relation to their self-efficacy and anxiety in laboratory contexts.