Mylene has just posted an interesting approach to fixing canned lab exercises: Quick Fixes for Canned Labs (Semester Review Pt 3).
The idea is simple: don’t assign labs in numerical order, but provide a library of lab exercises and assign things like “make a prediction about … and do an experiment to test your prediction”. The students have to either design their own experiments or find a relevant one. To finish the assignment, they have to present their prediction (and the theory they used to generate that prediction), the experiment to test the prediction, and explanations of discrepancies between what they predicted and what actually happened.
She also mentions focusing the students on measuring the differences between reality and predictions, rather than on trying to make an experiment demonstrate a theory.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: education, engineering, lab exercises
