One of the biggest challenges of teaching during a building or campus closure is sustaining the lab components of classes. Since many labs require specific equipment, they are hard to reproduce outside of that physical space.
The following should be considered as you plan to address lab activities:
- Take part of the lab online: Many lab activities require students to become familiar with certain procedures, and only physical practice of those processes will do. In such cases, consider if there are other parts of the lab experience you could take online (for example, video demonstrations of techniques, online simulations, analysis of data, other pre- or post-lab work), and save the physical practice parts of the labs until or if access is restored. The semester might get disjointed by splitting up lab experiences, but it might get you through the current campus closure.
- Investigate virtual labs : Online resources and virtual tools might help replicate the experience of some labs (for example, virtual dissection, night sky apps, video demonstrations of labs, simulations). Those vary widely by discipline, but check with your textbook publisher, or sites such as MERLOT for materials that might help replace parts of your lab during an emergency.
- Provide raw data for analysis : In cases where the lab includes both collection of data and its analysis, consider showing how the data can be collected, and then provide some raw sets of data for students to analyse. This approach is not as comprehensive as having students collect and analyse their own data, but it might keep them engaged with parts of the lab experience during the closure.
- Explore alternate software access: Some labs require access to specialized software that students cannot install on their own computers. Your technical officers might be able to help set up alternate computer labs that have the software your students need.
- Increase interaction in other ways: Sometimes labs are more about having time for direct student interaction, so consider other ways to replicate that level of contact if it is only your lab that is out of commission.
The following may prove useful to;
- School of Science & Informatics staff:
- OnlineLabs.in aims to serve as a comprehensive, encyclopedic reference about online labs in a variety of subjects, particularly virtual laboratory simulations for science education. They currently feature resources in Chemistry, Physics and Biology and Mathematics to help learners identify free and commercial virtual science labs.
- The OpenScience Laboratory an online laboratory that brings interactive practical science to students anywhere and anytime the internet is available.
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Virtual Labs An Initiative of the Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development under their National Mission on Education through ICT
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All staff:
- Open Educational Resources: Big List of Resources from University of Pittsburgh, includes:
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Canvas Commons - a Learning Object Repository (LOR) that makes it easy to share and find Open Educational Resources (OER). The Commons is available in the global menu on the Dashboard when you first login to Canvas.
