This course has a ridiculous amount of work for one credit. Avoid taking it at all costs. Dr. Morkowchuk is a fine professor and she makes expectations clear. She communicates well with the class and explains things thoroughly. The work isn't the most difficult, but the amount of work is literally absurd for just one credit.

Intro chem lab is structured well, except your entire experience starts with a few dice roll. With the nature of the course being taught by TAs and students working in assigned groups, you better pray that your TAs are chill and that your groupmates don't suck. Luckily for me, my experience was really great, but it shouldn't be hard anyways to change the trajectory of your grade if you are indeed stuck with horrible TAs/group members.

The lab itself is a lot of work with a prelab, the 3 hour lab itself, a postlab, and several lab reports and presentations. The grading is based on mastery/not yet mastered which I think is great since you're also given a good amount of tokens to exchange for a chance to redo a writing assignment or a quiz.

The assignments and all are really simple and easy, but the real struggle is figuring out the lab procedure within the time. The TAs aren't meant to be directly involved, but mine were able to guide us in the right direction if we were really lost or screwing our self-designed procedure up. Despite being a bit stressful at times, if you can work well your group, the rest of the course is smooth sailing. Just make sure to read ALL the instructions and the course should remind you of high school chemistry lab (for better or for worse). #tCFF23

I found this course somewhat enjoyable but a fair amount of work for a one-credit class. Pay close attention to the grading rubric, as all the grading is mastery-based, and failing one assignment can bump you down a letter grade. The course experience is luck-based, as some TAs are much better than others, and you'll need to get along well with your lab group. I believe that Morkowchuk actually teaches some of the sections, but I only saw her two or three times throughout the semester. The assignments to put extra effort into are the quizzes (three total) and the group projects/presentations, as you will need to pass all of these to receive an A in the class. Additionally, pay attention to the scientific writing assignments, as the rubric on these can be harsh. Failing one quiz, group project, or writing assignment will automatically bump you down. There are retakes for the quizzes, but if you fail a second time or miss the retake period, you're screwed. #tCFF23

So it says that Professor Morkowchuk teaches this course, but in reality all of the labs are run by one or two TAs and you occasionally watch videos explaining what you're going to do for a lab by Professor Morkowchuk. I found chem lab extremely boring. I thought CHEM 1410 was fairly good (for perspective, most people hate it), but the lab was so useless. The experiments we did were simple enough that a middle schooler could do all of them. The experiments didn't have anything to do with the content we were learning in lecture all year. They also didn't teach anything themselves. If you have intro chemistry 1 (CHEM 1410), you have to take this lab, but be warned that it is not going to be fun and it's going to take some time since the lab is a three hour chunk.

This lab was really annoying for several reasons. The concepts weren't necessarily difficult but instructions are very vague and the TA's are rarely helpful. They give you a very brief overview of the topic then give you a document summarizing of the experiment and expect you to conduct it on your own. Just about every group is confused at first then figures it out as they go. Our lab TA barely spoke English and sometimes didn't even know how to help us. It would definitely help if more focus was placed on learning necessary concepts BEFORE doing each experiment and if TA's were more prepared to help. Fortunately you're almost always working in a group and able to get by ok.
#tCFF23

This is definitely a case of hit or miss with your TA. I had Miles and he was awesome. I also had a great group. I think the titration we did was rushed because of time constraints, but Miles was patient. I cannot say the same for Morkowchuk, she was visibly mad. I actually really enjoyed lab - the experiments, my group, TA, etc. I can definitely see how that would go south if you didn't have all those things I mentioned. I think Miles was great when helping out students and making sure they were prepared for lab. The grading was fair, all the way until the final lab report.

The first thing people need to understand is that this lab is run and graded by TAs, not Morkowchuk so don't get mad at her. My TA (Paolo) was clearly uninterested and didn't want to be there, but an easy grader. Overall, the lab can be annoying because you can fail an assignment by just a little bit and how to then use a token to redo. Labs were fun and I did like my group, but this class is kind of one you need to just suck up and get through it because its not horrible, but not amazing either.

I think the main thing that makes or breaks this course is the TAs you get, which unfortunately is pretty random. Your lab group also makes a huge difference. I was fortunate enough to get a really chill lab TA, who helped us out when we were confused while performing experiments. My workshop/grading TA was also chill and helped us out when we didn't know what to do while planning our experiments. If we didn't have this help, the class would've been much more difficult, as you really have to plan each experiment entirely on your own without any background knowledge. In terms of work, it's a lot for a one credit class. You have to write plans, prelabs, lab summaries, postlabs, and two full-blown lab reports. You also usually have three quizzes per semester (my class only had two because of the November 13th shooting). You also have to create two presentations on two experiments that your present to the entire class with your lab group. Even though it was a lot of work, the grading system was really nice because it was mastery-based instead of points-based. As long as you got more than 80% of the questions right on an assignment, you got mastery. There's a table that shows you how many masteries you need on each different type of assignment in order to earn each letter grade. One thing that I would recommend is to try to sign up for an odd section number lab because then you are done a week early, as the even sections have a one-week delayed start due to lack of lab availability. #tCFfall22

Can be easier or harder depending on your TA, but pretty easy on the whole. My TA was fantastic. Getting an A or A+ is extremely easy as long as you show up to lab and workshop and do the assignments. Half the weeks, we had "workshop" instead of lab time because there were so many sections running, which was basically just an hour-long session where we planned our experiment. Experiments are not difficult and I think we were only there for anything close to the full three hours twice. Everything is graded as either Mastered or Not Yet Mastered, so don't spend longer on assignments than you need to. Just fulfill the requirements to the best of your ability. #tCFfall22

I honestly enjoyed this class a lot and yes, it was more work than needed for a 1 credit class, but it wasn't ever too difficult as long as you watched the prelab videos or went to online office hours. I liked the mastery grading scale because it made it pretty easy to get an A+, as long as you did your work. A lot of lab depends on how well you work with your lab group and if your TA grades generously. #tCFfall22