By Laura Corns and Rebecca Barnes
Are your students prepared for practical classes?
Practical laboratory classes are hugely important for developing Science students’ skills, and understanding of the discipline. Academics are well aware that the quality of learners’ preparation for the session significantly impacts on their ability to understand the experiments and develop their technical skills; however, this preparation tends to vary wildly across a cohort (some aren’t even sure what practical they’ve come to!).
We know we need all students to be well prepared - but how can we achieve this?
The pandemic introduced us to a new world of practical digital learning platforms
At the start of the pandemic the Biomedical Science (BMS) Department moved their physiology and neuroscience practicals online using a learning platform called Lt, (created by AD instruments). Lt is a cloud-based platform with a user-friendly interface. Students loved the interactive questions (such as MCQs or image labelling as shown below) and the ability to play around with simulated data that were embedded in these practicals.
When we returned to face to face practicals in September 2020, BMS decided to keep using Lt, creating pre-lab materials that students can complete before they arrive in the lab, with a separate Lt “lesson” for the practical instructions within the labs. The pre-labs cover some background information (as shown in the image below), the techniques that will be used, and any required health and safety information.
How can we tell if the online material has helped?
The School of Biosciences was formed two years ago from three departments and to enable a smooth transition in the teaching space, we maintained ‘home units’ that are roughly equivalent to the former departments. As part of this ongoing process we need to decide what practice to standardise across the School. For example, should we be running all our lab classes using Lt?
From speaking to students in the labs and the TellUS surveys, it seemed like the response to using Lt in the way adopted by BMS was overwhelmingly positive. However, as scientists we always like a bit more proof, especially if we were going to encourage other people within the School of Biosciences to adopt this approach.
In September 2022, we designed a study to evaluate the use of Lt; this covered many aspects of using the platform, including the effectiveness of the pre-labs. The study involved using 3 different types of practical instructions for the same module (Level 1 Molecular and Cell Biology). Which type of instruction the students received (paper instructions, pdf instructions viewed by a tablet, or Lt on a computer) depended on which home unit the student belonged to. All students used Lt in their practicals for the core skills module.
Pre-lab work in Lt increases the number of students who feel prepared for practical classes
The study showed that there were no differences in many areas including how focussed students were in the lab or how difficult they found the content, when using Lt compared to the other forms of lab instructions. In fact, all of the students were pretty happy! However, there was a significantly greater number of students who said they’d completed the pre-lab material when using Lt. Moreover they felt more prepared for the lab and more confident during the session after completing this material (Mann-Whitney U test; p<0.05, n = 153). See a previous Elevate blog by Jenny Burnham and Colin Crook for another example of how pre-lab work can reduce stress in a chemistry lab.
Of course even with Lt, we still had some students who did not engage with the material before entering the lab. We can try to reduce this number further by ensuring that students can’t access the practical lesson without completing the pre-lab first; a measure that’s especially useful if we want to ensure that students are looking over the health and safety elements.
How has this impacted our practical teaching?
- For those of us already using Lt, we’ll be sticking with it; especially for physiology and neuroscience where we have the added benefits of recording human (student) data straight into the platform.
- As the key benefit of Lt was in enhancing students’ preparation, staff delivering other practicals are focussing on designing engaging pre-lab material rather than moving to using Lt across the board.
- From text comments collected during our survey, it was clear that the embedded videos and interactive questions are what engaged students. Therefore, some staff are ensuring these elements are maintained but using different platforms, for example Blackboard.
Laura and Rebecca are teaching specialist in the School of Biosciences. Laura has a background in physiology and sensory neuroscience, and pedagogical interests in skills development and digital education. Rebecca has a background in molecular genetics and a pedagogical interest in student belonging and engagement; she is currently the Head of Student Voice for Biosciences.