Contextualized virtual lab-based activities for chemistry education in secondary school

Despite the existence and availability of simulations and virtual laboratories for chemistry education, their presence in high school classes is in a minority. In this paper, we present the available problems in The ChemCollective virtual laboratory (http://www.chemcollective.org) and we discuss its integration in the Catalan school curriculum in both in terms of contents and competencies. We also present three new contextualized activities that make use of this virtual laboratory. The activities have been designed to contribute to learning the topics of the chemical reaction (“Identificació de substàncies il·legals” and “Determinació i eliminació de la duresa de l’aigua”) and organic chemistry (“Prova d’insaturacions en productes alimentaris”) as they are taught at this school level. The activity “Identificació de substàncies il·legals” asks students to identify different substances confiscated in a warehouse. To solve this problem, the user is asked to study the reactivity of a set of compounds and afterwards to use this knowledge to classify some potentially illegal drugs. The activity should help the students to make sense of what the chemical reaction is and what is its value for the qualitative analysis of different products. The second activity “Determinació i eliminació de la duresa de l’aigua” models the process of the experimental determination of water hardness. It also explores the use of carbonate salts to soften it. This activity goes into the quantitative aspects of the chemical reaction. Finally, the activity “Prova d’insaturacions en productes alimentaris” allows connecting organic chemistry, biology and chemical reaction concepts, through the study of the nature of the fatty acids present in three alimentary products: butter, sunflower oil and olive oil.