@freemo First apologies, I imagine your skill with a pipette is unmatched.

My suggestion is that science labs should be a place to practice problem solving, deductive reasoning, and the scientific method. The labs I see especially in high school and lower division college classes are about who can follow step-by-step instructions to get closest to a predetermined correct result. The person who comes closest to measuring exactly 10.0ml of HCl wins.

@freemo @antares Any good resources on teaching the skills that you listed? Other than telling the student to go forth and do it? It would require a lot of one on one discussion and advising it seems.

@rspfau

Did you mean this for the OP?

@antares

@rspfau

So let me give an example. A chemistry class had done a unit on ways to identify Sodium salts and for homework had turned in a report detailing a proposed process to identify an unknown salt. However when students got to the lab, they were presented with a step by step guide instead of using the process they had developed themselves. Why?

Well, we know why. The powers that be did not trust students to use their own process because it might be wrong. It was just easier and less messy to hand out detailed instructions. But the real world is messy and doesn't come with instruction. In my opinion, the students were denied the chance to see the results of their own work and learn how to improve it.

@freemo

@antares @freemo In my discipline (genetics), most things we do are to very precisely follow established protocols. And many students aren't very good at it.

Perhaps some combination of the two might be maximally beneficial.

@rspfau

I would tend to agree.. which is what i meant when i said learning pipette skills will improve your abilities even if you never need to pipette again. These are critical skills just as most skills are, if you use them indirectly or directly.

@antares

@rspfau

I agree that upper division labs intended for students who will likely peruse a career in a lab environment should focus on the job skills seen in actual lab settings. A 400 level genetics class indeed should emphasize following established protocols with the needed precision. On the other hand 100 level science classes, especially those without prerequisites that are likely the GE classes for non-science majors, should emphasis scientific reasoning and iterative problem analysis through experimentation more than discipline specific lab skills.

I honestly don't care if the HR person doesn't remember how inductors work even though that is a core part of our business. I would like them to be able to determine that neither his coffee maker nor his printer are working because the power strip they plugged them both into has tripped its breaker. There will never be a lab on fixing common office appliances but there are skills we can teach people that even HR might be able to apply.

@freemo

@antares

I would argue it is perhaps just as important, maybe more so, for people to learn the skills even if they dont intend to work in a lab.

Ive seen what it looks like when someone isnt raised with a diverse education.. its ugly, very ugly.. hell its half the problem now. We need to go the other way and teach far more specialized and advanced skills of a broader range to students, not less.

@rspfau

@freemo

@antares I better understand where you're coming from. Initially I thought you were an educator yourself. When I was a teen, I'd take apart electronics (switches, resistors, and bulbs) and reassembled them to make other things. No instructions, just trial and error. Theres much value in that. Being an educator, I think it would take a special person to pull this off successfully given reticent students. The path of least resistance is often taken out of sheer exhaustion/exasperation.

@rspfau

I am not an educator in any formal sense. But i do donate a lot of my time tutoring low-income students for free. I also have presented and been a guest at many university lecturs. So I do have some familiarity.

@antares

@freemo @antares In college, lower level labs are taught by grad students and sometimes upper level undergrads. They have minimal educator skills and training. I once attempted to train a group of them to do labs that were slightly less canned and it didnt go well.

@rspfau

That sounds about right... though im not sure how effective our "training" is, but thats another matter.

@antares