Being able to contextualise and solve complex problems is a highly valued skill in STEM graduates--a skill which we strive to nurture in our students. Since its introduction into undergraduate teaching, laboratory teaching has been used to consolidate students conceptual understanding, develop their practical skills and inculcate an evidence based…

It was planned to introduce online pre-laboratory session activities to a first-year undergraduate physics laboratory course to encourage a minimum level of student preparation for experiments outside the laboratory environment. A group of 16 and 17 year old laboratory work-experience students were tasked to define and design a pre-laboratory…

We have developed a semester-long laboratory project for an undergraduate immunology course in which students study multiple aspects of macrophage biology including differentiation from progenitors in the bone marrow, activation upon stimulation with microbial ligands, expression of cell surface markers, and modulation of cytokine production. In…

Multimedia instruction has been shown to serve as an effective learning aid for chemistry students. In this study, the viability of student-generated video instruction for organic chemistry laboratory techniques and procedure was examined and its effectiveness compared to instruction provided by a teaching assistant (TA) was evaluated. After…

Under a previous grant (2005-08), researchers and teachers at Stanford University (SU) and the University of Gothenburg (GU) co-designed a ten-week interdisciplinary, research-based laboratory course in human biology to be taught online to undergraduate students. Essentials in the subject were taught during the first four weeks of this course.…

Incorporating research-based lab activities into general chemistry at a large university can be challenging, considering the high enrollments and costs typically associated with the courses. Performing sweeping curricular overhauls of the general chemistry laboratory can be difficult, and in some cases discouraged, as many would rather maintain…

In the U.S., future economic viability is being challenged by an increasing inability to replace retiring engineers and scientists through the year 2020 due to declines in learner motivation and proficiency in science. The expository laboratory appears to be linked with non-engagement and is one possible contributing factor to this problem…

An evaluation of a course aimed at developing university students' understanding of the nature of scientific measurement and uncertainty is described. The course materials follow the framework for metrology as recommended in the "Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement" (GUM). The evaluation of the course is based on…

Students should enjoy their laboratory classes and for this purpose a project-based activity is added to a conventional physical chemistry laboratory. Students were given project work instead of conventional experiment and then they had to make progress in the project according to instructions and then carry out experiments related to the project.

The purpose of the study was to establish a list of acceptable terminal behavioral objectives for the nonmajor general biology laboratory as perceived by each instructor in every institution for higher education in the state of Missouri who is responsible for planning, organizing, operating, and evaluating that course. It was further the purpose…