As the laboratory instructor for major-specific chemistry and biochemistry lab courses, one of my top priorities is to provide transferable lab skills for my students.
While numerous field-specific techniques are introduced through a lab course, students will not become experts at a method within the constraints of a teaching laboratory. Even if it were possible, students will encounter different techniques in their own research lab or future job. Therefore, my goal is to build each student’s comfort and confidence in a lab setting as well as to provide them with the tools needed to make sound decisions in future lab environments.
I liken it to making a cake. While a person can bake one without knowing the significance of each ingredient, a pastry chef will understand the importance of each ingredient and how changing it will affect the resulting cake. Similarly, at the end of a well-designed experiment, my goal is that a student will not only be able to do a new technique but that they will also understand how it can be modified in the future to meet their needs.
Making Active Learning Interactive
By default, laboratory courses are active learning environments. Students carry out hands-on experiments. They acquire and analyze data. They interpret results and draw conclusions.
Although students participate in each step of the process, the question I wrestle with is: Do they leave with the transferable skills I had envisioned when designing the experiment? By incorporating interactive learning activities into the prelab discussions, I am able to make the lab more engaging, without changing the experiment itself.
The following example is the modification I made to one of the experiments.
An Updated Experiment
The first experiment of the junior-level biochemistry laboratory focuses on buffers and pH. The experiment is designed such that during the class period, students will:
Recount from previous courses the definition of a buffer
Review how the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation is used to relate pH to pKa
Recognize characteristics of a buffer that make it ideal for specific uses
Employ the above knowledge to prepare buffers
Information about buffer preparation can easily be looked up on the internet. In fact, there are websites that indicate exactly how much of each reagent to add to get a specific concentration and pH. The transferable skills come from the third objective.
Previous Approach
Spend approximately five minutes during the prelab lecture urging students to suggest buffer properties they feel are important (e.g., solubility, cost/availability, non-interfering). While this encouraged engagement, a relatively small number of students made contributions. The majority were simply observers.
Interactive Approach – Concept Map
An example concept map
(~Seven minutes) Working in groups of four, students brainstorm what buffer features must be considered when choosing a system to use. Groups are given a blank concept map similar to what is shown here. Each group should be able to come up with five to six features. Additional details can be included where appropriate. A few examples are included in the figure.
(~Eight minutes) Have volunteers from the different groups add a feature from their concept map to a collective one on the board. As a group we then fill in examples not included by students and/or expand on what is already there.
Although this approach takes more time, the outcome helps ensure that each student is a participant in the discussion and not simply a bystander.
