This paper describes a student-focused activity that promotes effective learning in analytical chemistry. Providing an environment where students were responsible for their own learning allowed them to participate at all levels from designing the problem to be addressed, planning the laboratory work to support their learning, to providing evidence of their learning in the form of a portfolio. The area of chemistry studied was chromatography--specifically gas chromatography and high performance liquid chromatography and their application to the analysis of amino acids. Students were highly committed and as third-year, final-semester students they could see the relevance of such an approach. (Contains 2 notes, 1 table and 1 figure.)