Incorporating Labs into Online Courses
Are you converting an in-person course with a lab component for online delivery? It can be a challenge to switch face-to-face tasks requiring special equipment to a virtual space. There are several things to consider if part of your online course involves lab work, simulations, or demonstrations.
Learning Objectives
What are the learning objectives? Some learning objectives require a practical application of a certain skill, whereas some require a reflection of a task. For example: “Identify the products formed when butane reacts with oxygen” or “Analyze the dangerous effects of chemical combustion with respect to plant and animal life.” These learning objectives don’t require learners to perform an activity; they could watch a video of such a lab demonstration. Comparatively, “Build a robot that lights up when it successfully presses one of two switches” is a learning objective that necessitates a learner’s active participation.
Instructors often like labs for several reasons. Firstly, labs are dynamic and present a change from the typical lecture format, which can be refreshing for instructors and learners. In an online environment, learners receive a different learning experience than the lecture approach, so a lab component may be less necessary to maintain learner engagement. Secondly, instructors often want to recreate what they loved about their learning experience and assume learners want the same. This may not be the case for learners, depending on the purpose of the course. For higher education, the science-for-non-majors courses may be more popular if they didn’t include labs. Finally, labs are memorable, for better or for worse. (Amanda, an author on this post, still remembers dissecting a fetal pig in 1998. Coincidentally, she has also been a vegetarian since 1998.) There are other ways to make learning memorable if labs are not strictly required according to the learning objectives.
Observe and Learn Options
For courses with learning objectives requiring reflection on a task, there are a number of choices.
Many virtual labs, demonstrations, and simulations are available for use in your course. When picking virtual lab resources, consider the source. It’s advisable to review virtual labs before using them in your course to ensure accuracy and alignment to your objectives. Consider some of the following free resources when exploring virtual labs to use in your course:
After choosing the desired resource, make a plan to integrate the resource into your course. Ensure instructions are clear for learners if they need to visit an external site. Some resources will be available as embeddable iframes which can save learners from leaving your Brightspace instance.
Labs through Graphics
Another possibility is creating labs with a series of graphics if the resources are available to you. If you have a learning objective like “Observe the process of cell mitosis” in a course with learners with low-bandwidth internet (which may not allow for reliable video streaming), you could photograph slides on a microscope, which learners could independently zoom in on. Alternatively, you could ask a graphic designer to illustrate the concept being demonstrated.
Hands-On Options
If you happen to have a textbook (including a virtual one stored on your computer) within hand’s reach, you’re probably among the many people used to purchasing resources to supplement your learning. Could a lab kit be sold to learners, which includes all necessary components for at-home science experiments for the course? Better yet, could it be rented and returned, minus a small fee, for the length of the course? Could lab kits be made available for borrowing at the library? Could learners be presented with a list of required supplies that they could source themselves?
Some labs are designed to be exciting, like with combustion. Experimenting with combustion isn’t something we’d want to do inside our homes. Can your current experiment be modified and still meet the learning objective? For example, if your learning objective requires performing a chemical reaction, but not specifically combustion, consider developing another experiment that still meets the learning objective but is safer for learners to complete independently and at home.
Learners could record themselves performing the lab work using Brightspace’s Video Note, which allows video recordings of up to 30 minutes to be submitted for evaluation. The only hardware required for this is a webcam and microphone or a cell phone with recording capability.
Finally, before you encourage learners to complete their own lab experiments at home, consider if the equipment required is too large or expensive to make available to students easily. Some activities are impossible for learners to do without being in a spacious, controlled and supervised environment. If this is the case, consider if your learners are geographically close to a potential lab space, so learners could complete their content learning asynchronously but attend an in-person, supervised lab, either at scheduled times or in a drop-in style, much like office hours.
By thinking creatively and finding solutions that allow learners the flexibility of learning lab concepts independently, we are welcoming learners who have unique needs, and who may have unique insights, into our disciplines.
