5 Best Practices In a Teaching Laboratory

Orienting towards success

Many students with physical disabilities will benefit from being allowed access to the building and teaching laboratories prior to the first day of class, and this should be encouraged by offering students a guided tour of these locales by the course instructor, a teaching assistant, or a lab coordinator. This exercise will provide students an opportunity to map out their learning environment in the absence of distraction and will allow them to directly assess the accessibility of the room and building firsthand. Ideally, should any issues with accessibility be identified, the instructor will also have sufficient time to address these before the course commences. This activity will also allow students the chance to discuss any particular concerns they may have with instructors in the absence of their peers and offers an excellent opportunity to establish a positive connection between the student and instructor.

All physical disabilities fall within a spectrum, and individual students may vary greatly with respect to their capacity to navigate an in-lab environment. Simply assuming a room and building to be accessible because it is “supposed to be” or has been identified as being accessible to individuals in a wheelchair (for example) is not sufficient to ensure accessibility for all individuals. Making these assumptions creates the real risk of a student with a physical disability being unable to readily access their teaching lab on time at the start of the course, putting your student at a disadvantage from day one, and creating unnecessary stress for all involved. It is equally important to consider that in many instances teaching laboratories will vary in design, and in how they are set up for a given course. For these reasons, allowing students advanced access to their assigned teaching lab (i.e., not just an adjacent lab that is similar) is the best way of ensuring your student’s success.

Starting off on the right foot

As a rule, best practice dictates that an instructor discuss accessibility and safety with the class at the beginning of the first “in lab” activity. Initiating this dialogue informs students that you care about their safety and wellbeing and encourages individuals with concerns to discuss these with you. Always keep in mind that a student may not wish to disclose their disability, nor do you have a right to this ask invasive questions about the nature of their disability or health. Moreover, a student may not necessarily be aware that they have a disability (particularly relevant to cognitive and learning disabilities), or may not realize that their disability has the potential to impact learning in this unique environment (particularly true if an individual has not been in a laboratory setting before). For example, individuals with Sensory Processing Disorder or autism spectrum disorder may be adversely affected by the unusual smells or sounds that can occur in teaching laboratories, especially if these occur unexpectedly from the student’s point of view. This is also relevant to individuals struggling with Post-traumatic stress disorder. For this reason, it is recommended that an instructor give a heads-up to all students at the start of a lab when an experiment is likely to give rise to loud noises and/or unusual smells. This is also important in instances where service dogs may be exposed to unfamiliar sounds/smells, and may be adversely affected. For more details on how to safely accommodate service dogs, please refer to the section below.

Keep it clean

Many of the “best practices” that have been commonly adopted to promote student safety in teaching labs are key towards ensuring the wellbeing of disabled students in these environments.  Keeping aisles clear of obstructing materials (such as student backpacks, coats, and lab equipment) is of paramount importance in classes that include individuals with low vision and/or impaired mobility disabilities. Ideally, all students should be provided with lockers outside the classroom to store their belongings, apart for items necessary to the lab (such as pens/pencils, lab manual). An important variation to this rule is that some students may have conditions that require immediate access to medications or medical devices (for example). In these instances, best practice may entail permitting such a student to keep these possessions stored within a small bag, with the understanding that this object should not be placed upon the floor or lab bench but must be kept upon their person at all times. Similarly, students with conditions such as ADHD and autism spectrum disorder may benefit from having access to small sensory “stim” or “fidget” toys that aid in promoting focus and/or self-soothing in the lab. Small items such as spinner and spiky sensory rings are ideal for an in-lab environment, as they are often worn as jewelry upon a person’s body, however these may present difficulties if worn on hands when gloves are required.  Chewable jewelry, which is less common in adults, should be discouraged in many instances to avoid contaminating the item with chemicals or biological hazards.

Avoid that old stand-by: the pre-lab quiz

When I was an undergraduate student, many labs would start with a pre-lab quiz that was designed to encourage student preparedness, and assess our understanding of the lab, and pre-lab quizzes still represent a commonly used tool in lab-based courses even today. Nevertheless, short quizzes that are tightly timed are poor evaluators of students with many commonly occurring learning disabilities, including ADHD. Such students struggle to perform well in a testing environment rife with distractions, and yet the short duration of such quizzes effectively precludes testing in an alternative centre, as would be allowed for a formal exam. Although it may be tempting to dismiss these concerns if the quizzes represent only a small percentage of a final grade, keep in mind that poor performance on a quiz (even one that is not worth much) is stressful and discouraging, and will likely undermine a student’s confidence at the very beginning of a lab. An easy to implement alternative is to offer the same quiz in an online format, allowing students to complete the assessment in a quieter environment of their choosing.

Specialized Lab Equipment & an Extra Set of Hands

Many pieces of commonly used lab equipment may be easily modified to accommodate various types of disability, with examples including:

1. Addition of enlarged, high contrast markings to help users with impaired vision. Examples: rulers, thermometers, syringes.
2. Equipment that ‘speaks’ to users. Examples: calculators, scales, thermometers.
3. Modified pipette-filling devices, for users who may not be able to grasp a traditional pipette.
4. For some visually impaired students, lab activities may be supported through the use of colour-coding schemes, in which coloured pieces of tape may be used to aid in identification of chemicals, for example.

A great resource that provides more information about specialized lab equipment, and manufacturers, is the DO-IT Centre (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology).

In cases where an individual may not have reliable use of his/her/their hands, a work around may be the recruitment of a TA to offer an extra set of hands, following instructions provided by the student. This partnering may also work well to support students with impaired vision. While it may seem like an easy solution to partner a student with a disability with an able-bodied classmate, keep in mind that this may cause unnecessary stress to both students: the first student may feel concern about slowing down or inconveniencing a peer, whereas the ‘helper’ student may feel pressured to take on too much.