6 Online Laboratories and Tutorials

An online lab involves experimental or practical work that allows students to see course concepts in action. This section is about online laboratories that are pre-recorded videos of the instructor doing the experiment and computerized software that replicates the conditions in a physical lab. We also share our perspectives with online tutorial sessions. 

 

Table 6.1: Our student perspective with pre-recorded video lab.

What we are encouraged by:

What we are concerned with:
  • We can see the full-scale lab completed correctly by the instructor.
  • We can re-watch the lab multiple times.
  • It can be time-consuming to make out what is happening in the video.
  • Some of the expectations of the post-lab write-up may not be communicated as clearly.

 

Table 6.2: Our student perspective with software lab.

What we are encouraged by:

What we are concerned with:
  • The lab creates an opportunity to see how the relevancy and context of theoretical information can apply to the real world.
  • We can change the lab parameters to experiment more than what is possible in a pre-recorded lab.
  • If the simulation does not have a description of what is occurring, we can miss the point of doing the lab.
  • We may have to learn how to use the software used.

 

 

Table 6.3: Our student perspective with online tutorials.

What we are encouraged by:

What we are concerned with:
  • Working with classmates over video calls in the LMS or Discord to solve problems and asking each other questions to clarify the topics.
  • The tutorial creates an opportunity to practice using the course information and to reinforce the topics.
  • When the benefits of attending the tutorial are not easily seen, we become unengaged and feel like we don’t want to attend the tutorial.
  • The difficulty of the practice questions can give a false representation of what the other assessments will be like.

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Online Learning: A Student Perspective Copyright © by Madicyn Anderson, Trevor Winchester, Aidan Burns, Rana Kilani, Collin Campbell, Steven Shilmoon, Sawyer King, Lakshdeep Singh, and Dave Cormier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book