APCELL: The Australian Physical Chemistry Enhanced Laboratory Learning Project

The Australian Physical Chemistry Enhanced Laboratory Learning project was established to address the problem of falling student enrolments and continuations in Australian physical chemistry courses. The Project has pooled the resources of over 30 Australian universities (and several New Zealand affiliates) to establish a protocol for developing and assuring the quality of laboratory teaching experiments. Using a research-led teaching approach an Educational Template was developed which ensures that contributions to the project are strongly learner focussed. In this paper we introduce the APCELL project, describe some of the approaches that have been employed in developing the project, outline important progress achieved to date, and discuss the interaction between APCELL and This Journal.