I like the overall hopeful and helpful attitude of the article.

We (SCO laboratory instructors) can improve our experiments.

There is helpful table to compare and contrast expository experiments with open inquiry, problem-based, and guided inquiry experiments.

I'm not convinced all the terminology is helpful, but I do appreciate the urging to consider the pedagogical value of our experiments and not just "do what we did last year."

Sometimes its just a matter of framing the problem.

My quick and dirty definition of inquiry activities is that "you don't give the students all the answers up-front."

Instead of "The Synthesis of Triphenylmethanol," the experiment becomes "The Grignard Synthesis of an Unknown Alcohol."

Experiments that give multiple or unanticipated products such as "The Dehydration of Methylcyclohexanols," are interesting for the simple reason that they are a bit unpredictable.

Yes, "expository" experiments can be transformed into open inquiry, problem-based, or guided inquiry experiments with a little creativity.

The authors gives an example of aromatic substitution that gives multiple/unanticipated products.

Why didn't they include the details in the supplementary materials?

I did not appreciate the unfounded disparaging sentence, "In spite of a preponderance of literature demonstrates the advantages of other laboratory pedagogies, expository experiments (also called verification labs, or traditional labs) still comprise the most common type of experiment." To support that opinion the cite a ten-year old study of general chemistry curricula! I think the authors are wrong. True, organic chemists are not filling JCE and related journals with their insights into guided inquiry but they are certainly improving their teaching and their experiments.

Submitted by JBF