Writing on Glass: A New Way to Teach Science Labs!
- May 5, 2018
- 3 min read
How many times have you wished that you could find a better way to teach labs? Well now there is a better way than the original cookie cutter technique! I know what you are thinking - it's called CURE's Course Based Undergraduate Research Experiences, please tell us something new? So I will show you a new technique of teaching labs that is 'student centered'. Picture the scene- you are handing out the protocol for a lab class, then explaining it, demonstrating the steps and then when the students finally do the lab they have a million questions and it seems like they haven't heard the last 45 mins of your class. Sound familiar? It's frustrating - but there is a much better way of doing it!
So go back to the time when you mentored students who came to do internships in a research lab, did you teach them a class? Nope - neither did I. So how did you do it? You gave them a protocol a day before and you asked them to read it then they would shadow you the following day. The technique that I use in my Biology major laboratory classes is a variation of mentoring students in a research lab.
The way I do it is to hand out the protocol (actually I create laboratory workbooks for the students so that they have all the labs in the same place), then ask them to read the protocol and the background of the experiment and research how it pertains to the real world- they can use their phones to do the research. I usually give them around 20 mins to do this in groups. After that they take dry erase markers and create a poster of the background and steps in the experimental protocol. Then they have to explain/present the lab protocol and the context of the lab in the real world. They actually create their posters on the glass walls of the lab hence the title of the post- writing on glass (please see image below the post). Now the attention is on the student and not on you this is called 'student centered learning'. Students have now effectively taken charge of their own learning and are engaged and motivated.
Now if the lab requires the use of a new technique that they are not familiar with then I call one student from each group and demonstrate it to them (I don't call on the whole class) then they go back to their groups and demonstrate it to their groups and teach each other (peer-mentoring). They then go ahead with the experiment following their protocol and each group can only ask me 2 questions during the lab if they are unsure of anything (I start knocking off points if they try to ask me more than 2 questions)- this builds problem-solving skills . After they are done with the experiment they collaborate with each other to write down the results and conclusions (I usually have extra questions at the end of the laboratory workbook for them to research and answer).
Finally they report out their results in their groups with each student in the group participating. This technique puts the focus on the student so they are much better prepared to do the work and become engaged and invested in their own learning, not to mention, that it puts them in a stronger position when they intern in a real-life laboratory because now they have the ability to read and understand a scientific protocol and to work independently.
Another big plus is that they don't have to pre-read anything for the lab- they do everything in class including writing their laboratory reports. They cannot leave class without showing me their lab notebooks and handing in their notebooks to me at the end of class. This way they do all of their lab work and write their laboratory notebooks during the laboratory class, they research the protocol, collaborate with each other and also present their work - building a host of different skill-sets within one class.
But what about the CURE's you ask? The Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences? Good things come to those who wait...... so please keep reading my blog and follow me on Linked-in! See you soon!
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