Well-prepared students in your laboratory class

LabBuddy leads to well prepared students!

A typical example of any teachers’ lab class

Imagine you are supervising a laboratory class, and one of your students is about to make a mistake by discarding the supernatant containing the desired component instead of the pellet. Despite your exhaustive efforts to make the protocol as straightforward as possible, there are always students who do not seem to think while executing a protocol. You wonder: how to combat this phenomenon?

The effect of cognitive overload on meaningful learning

During laboratory education, students’ cognitive abilities are challenged since they have to process a lot of information simultaneously. Research has shown that poorly prepared students have a much higher chance of getting a cognitive overload. When students experience cognitive overload, they are primarily focused on completing the laboratory work as soon as possible rather than actively thinking about the impact of their actions. This results in very little meaningful learning. At the same time, teachers are working hard to ensure that all students can complete the lab work safely and in time. Therefore, poor student preparation is very little meaningful learning and comes with a high teacher workload.

Where lab education meets LabBuddy

LabBuddy is an e-learning solution to supplement traditional laboratory education by creating a form of blended learning. Since 2013 successfully implemented throughout Europe in many universities’ lab education.

LabBuddy helps students prepare before the start of the laboratory work, supports them while working in the laboratory, and guides them during the processing of their results after the laboratory work. As a result, i) students enter the lab well-prepared, ii) students can independently do their lab work, and iii) teachers spend less time answering low-level questions, so they have time to engage in scientific discussions with students.

An example is shown below:

"With the help of LabBuddy, students were able to quickly and efficiently design and perform their own experiments"

Upgrade of the course’s structure. During this course, students are free to design their own experiments and to answer their research question, within a given subject and with a provided toolbox. We wanted to provide an online tool to structure their ideas, but keep the free set-up of the course.

We have uploaded all the generic protocols and toolboxes, that were previously provided in the course-reader, in LabBuddy (ExperD), per experimental week. Furthermore, we included the possibility to plan and assign experiments, upload the data and discuss the results with the entire project-group.

With the use of LabBuddy, the students obtained a quick overview of the course, obtained insight in the experimental workflow and were able to work together efficiently. Compared to previous years, students quickly caught up with the workflow of the course.

We have uploaded all the generic protocols and toolboxes, that were previously provided in the course-reader, in LabbBuddy (ExperD), per experimental week. Furthermore, we included the possibility to plan and assign experiments, upload the data and discuss the results with the entire project-group.