Chemistry: A Guided Inquiry, Part 1

Kendall Hunt is excited to partner with The POGIL Project to publish materials in a variety of disciplines that are designed for use in active learning, student-centered classrooms.

POGIL is an acronym for Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning. Because POGIL is a student-centered instructional approach, in a typical POGIL classroom or laboratory, students work in small teams with the instructor acting as a facilitator. The student teams use specially designed activities that generally follow a learning cycle paradigm. These activities are designed to have three key characteristics:

• They are designed for use with self-managed teams that employ the instructor as a facilitator of learning rather than a source of information.
• They guide students through an exploration to construct understanding.
• They use discipline content to facilitate the development of important process skills, including higher-level thinking and the ability to learn and to apply knowledge in new contexts. 

For more information, please visit www.pogil.org

Rick Moog received an A.B. in chemistry from Williams College and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Stanford University. He is currently Professor of Chemistry at Franklin & Marshall College and the Executive Director of The POGIL Project. He is a proud recipient of the 2016 George C. Pimentel Award in Chemical Education from the American Chemical Society. Rick has been using a guided inquiry approach to teaching and chemistry since 1994, and is the coauthor of POGIL materials for general chemistry and physical chemistry.

Gail Webster received her B.S. in secondary chemistry education from Virginia Commonwealth University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in analytical chemistry from North Carolina State University. She taught chemistry for twenty-five years at both the high school and college levels. Always an advocate of student-centered learning, she incorporated POGIL pedagogy in her classes in 2004 and then became active within the POGIL community. She is currently a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy. She has been a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy and is currently a senior STEM Analyst with Strategic Analysis in Alexandria, VA.

John J. Farrell is Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at Franklin & Marshall College. He earned his doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh in 1964 and began working at F&M in Lancaster, PA, the next year. In 2021, Farrell was honored by his undergraduate alma mater as a recipient of the Baldwin Wallace Alumni Merit Award, the highest honor conferred upon a grade by the university.