22.2: Online Labs

Online (or virtual) labs simulate traditional settings, and sometimes take students beyond what can be done in a traditional lab. In general, there are two types of labs. One simulates real experiments, equipment, or procedures, while the other lets learners access and control real equipment from a remote location. These are different from software simulations that emulate real-world scenarios such as investing money, controlling power plants, and flying airplanes. An online lab is not created simply by transferring a lab workbook to a website, allowing students to access software from different campus or off-campus locations or enabling them to submit assignments via the Internet. In this chapter, the term “lab” is used generically for any setting where practical skills are taught, such as in labs, shops, and classrooms.

Some online labs let you simulate lab procedures or equipment. For example, using the computer’s mouse, students can get a beaker, put a precise amount of a specific chemical in it, and virtually carry out all of the needed procedural steps. This is useful for preparing students to carry out lab procedures efficiently in a reallife lab. One problem is that online labs are much more valuable if the learner can also see the results. It would be ideal to let learners virtually mix chemicals and to provide opportunities that would be too costly or dangerous to carry out in a real lab. However, as the number of variables increases, the complexity of online lab design and possibilities increase. Imagine all of the possibilities with all of the different chemicals mixed together in different volumes, concentrations, combinations, and sequences. You could theoretically state what would happen for each case but, for practical reasons, students would not be able to see a video clip or animation of each possibility.

Problems with Teaching Lab Skills in Traditional Way

There can be numerous problems when teaching practical skills in typical face-to-face labs:

• When a demonstration is done, some students, such as those in the back of the class, may not be able to clearly see what is being demonstrated.
• Many instructors will not show all of the possible demonstrations, due to time, cost, or equipment limitations.
• Dangerous, expensive, or unavailable equipment or materials may limit what learners can see or do.
• The costs of building and maintaining labs are high.
  • Even if a lab can be built, funds are still needed to run labs. Staff, materials, and equipment replacement due to breakage as well as wear and tear are significant. Equipment upgrades are also a costly, important consideration.
• It may not be possible or practical to teach some skills.
  • For example, one way to teach troubleshooting involves taking components out of functioning systems, breaking them, putting them back in, and letting students determine the problem. However, this is impractical because of the time it takes to remove, break, and install components, cost of later repairing the components, problem that this needs to be done to many components, and time required to have all of the students individually determine the problem for each broken component.
• In many cases, if a student misses a lab, they will not have the opportunity to do it later.
• Students are often not able to repeat a lab if something goes wrong. This is often due to time constraints.
• Existing media, needed to teach practical skills, may not be easily available.
  • A common illustration of this is where a repair person may need to see a series of video clips or photographs while working on equipment.
• Some existing traditional teaching materials that are used in labs are not effective.
  • In one case, a 20-minute videotape was created to train student mechanics how to disassemble and assemble an aircraft engine. However, the total disassembly and assembly requires approximately 200 steps. The videotape did not provide the details that the students needed.
• It may not be possible to offer live training.
  • Logistical challenges can arise when experts do not have enough time to travel to reach learners or even to simply have the time to teach (i.e., there is no extra time in their full-time job).
• Learners may not be able to attend live training locations.
  • This is an inherent problem in distance education. Many learners can learn the theory online or through other distance education solutions. However, they may not be able to learn the needed practical skills at a distance. Yet, these practical skills are often essential for enhancing learning.
• Costs to attend live training can be high.
  • This can be seen when numerous participants are required to travel to a workshop.
• There may be a need for just-in-time learning.
  • There are many times when a learner needs immediate training and cannot wait for a course or workshop to become available or be completed.

Given sound instructional design strategies, technology has solved these problems. For example, online labs can:

• show close-ups of procedures that all can see
• show extra demonstrations
• contain an individual’s expertise
• offer alternative instructional approaches
• eliminate the costs of travelling to face-to-face labs
• be available when and where a student wants
• show expensive or dangerous procedures as the procedures would only have to be done once for the recording session and would then be available as needed
• include media, especially short, step-by-step video clips to illustrate specific concepts or procedures such as disassembling and assembling an aircraft engine.
• provide “just-in-time” learning

Instructional Design for Online Labs

The general principles of instructional design apply to all educational materials. However, when designing online labs, there are other things to consider. These are discussed below.

Learning outcomes

Consider what the learner really needs to learn rather than what you want to teach or have traditionally taught. More specifically, for practical skills, determine what the learner actually needs to do. One way to do this is by imagining what skills the learner needs in the real world. To illustrate this, in some cases in the laboratory portion of chemistry, the learner does not really need to pour one chemical into another. The important skills relate to the observations, data analysis, and conclusions that are drawn. For teaching practical troubleshooting skills, the needed skill may be the ability to analyze the interrelationships between components of the system. Regardless, of the application, an online lab should simulate the actual practical skills needed to ensure that learning is authentic. In other words, online labs should focus on skills needed in the real world.

Note

Focus on what the learner really needs to learn. Previously taught skills may not be relevant.

Creating the instructional strategy

The instructional challenge is to ensure that the practical skills taught via the computer transfer to the real world. Evidence supports that, with solid instructional design, this can be done. The foundation for the instructional design is the learning outcomes. The learning outcomes, lead to the design of the instructional strategy—what needs to be done to ensure that the students will effectively and efficiently learn.

For the instructional strategy, determine how to ensure that most all learners will learn effectively. This is a particular challenge when students are on their own and cannot have their questions immediately answered. Think outside the box to guarantee learning. Consider simulation, discovery-learning techniques, and active experimentation. Page-turning activities will not suffice for learning many practical skills. Use the technology for its strengths rather than simply transferring content from one format to another.

Note

The key is to determine what needs to be done to ensure effective learning will occur.

Think about the limitations of teaching each skill online. You will have to realistically determine what level of skill you can achieve. For example, in an online biology lab, how would you teach a student to learn how to use a microscope? This is a limitation of using online technology. However, a lot can be done with visual media. You could show the coarse adjustment being used to focus an image, then show what would be seen inside the ocular lens, then show fine adjustments being made, and then what the learner would see inside the ocular lens. A practical activity could have the learner clicking on arrows to move the coarse and fine adjustments (clockwise and counter-clockwise) and see the corresponding image of what would be seen. The goal would be to find the clearest image. Video clips and activities can similarly be used for demonstrating other microscope components, such as the condenser lens. This would not be as good as what is done in a real lab, but would definitely give a sense of how a real microscope works.

Other activities could potentially lead to better results than a real lab. As a comparison, in a real lab, students see specimens and are then asked to draw what they see so that they can later study from their drawings. In an online lab, students will see full-colour video clips and photographs that they can later study for their lab test. One key in creating a successful online lab is getting as close as possible to reality (given constraints of time and money).

A part of the instructional strategy is to organize the information into small enough chunks for the students to successfully learn. A typical need for this is when a procedural skill has numerous steps. If so, consider teaching the entire process in logical groups of three to six steps. Many instructional resources provide too much information or too many steps for students to learn at one time.

Instructional strategies should include some content on the potential avenue for making mistakes. Ask the content expert about typical mistakes made after the content is taught in the traditional way. If one only teaches what is correct, the learner may never learn what can go wrong. Teaching what can go wrong is helpful in teaching students about safety in chemistry labs.

Note

Address potential mistakes that learners make in live labs.

Teaching practical skills via computer usually requires a variety of specific media to enhance learning as well as to test skills. It is often difficult to test practical skills with only text. Plan in advance to record photographs and video clips of skills done incorrectly. These become excellent resources for testing. One challenge will be in creating the media needed since live labs typically depend on some copyrighted material. It is not safe to assume that you can get copyright clearance from the originators, especially if you plan to sell the product.

Determine whether assessment is realistic as a true measure of performance. This is particularly important for practical skills. When testing, consider all difficulty levels. Many existing technology-based resources are weak in that they only address low-level thinking skills rather than the actual skills needed.

Make the program highly interactive throughout. Interactivity requires the learner to actively think while learning. Creating interactions in the virtual environment is easily done. You can have students drag and drop items, increase and decrease settings to observe results, make decisions and see consequences, and answer questions based on video clips and photographs showing correct and incorrect procedures or results. Remember to always provide detailed feedback, even when the answer is right. This is in case the student guessed the correct answer or answered correctly for the wrong reason(s).

Note

Ensure that you keep the learner engaged and thinking throughout.

Controlling Real Equipment

Virtually controlling real equipment can be challenging. One problem is enabling control across computer platforms. Although it is not trivial, it can be solved with web-based tools that are designed for interoperability and machine-to-machine interaction over a network. However, this is a major problem if the equipment is not designed for remote access. Virtual control may require a lab technician for some tasks such as preparing and loading samples. Will this need to be done 24 hours per day and seven days per week? It is hard to generalize whether the overall labour, materials, and facilities costs will be higher for live labs or virtual labs that enable remote control of real equipment.

There may be some logistical problems with allowing remote access to equipment. Imagine if 100 students signed up for a course that included remote access to equipment. Consider 1,000 virtual students. Can large numbers of virtual students be supported? What if “live” students also need to access the equipment? What happens if a virtual student wants to access equipment that another virtual student is using? How does a lab technician support more than one virtual student at a time? When will the equipment be available for virtual students? How many units will be available for remote control?

Note

Determine the logistics, benefits, and costs of virtually controlling real equipment before taking on such a project.

Handling Lab Tests

Lab tests can be done any way you want. You can:

• Have students come to campus to be tested in a live lab. However, this would prevent some students from being able to complete an online program.
• Require students to write paper-based exams. It may be that only a portion of the skills could be adequately tested in a paper-based format. Invigilation may need to be addressed.
• Have learners complete a computer-delivered test. The test could be wholly or partially based on learning objects, especially video clips and photographs, already used in the online lab. Invigilation may need to be addressed.

Articulation

Articulation may be an issue. Some people will simply be adverse to change, or assume that an online lab is inferior to a live lab. Other people will argue that you cannot replace the real thing, or that some things cannot be simulated online. (Sometimes the sense of touch and smell play important roles in learning.) Since most online labs only show the correct results, some will resist online labs because an advantage of actual labs is that significant learning takes place through mistakes that students make. (You can disarm that argument by addressing typical errors in your designs.) Yet others will need research confirmation of effective results before accepting the technology. The good news is that some are claiming that online labs can be rigorous enough to be equivalent to actual labs. An online lab you create might initially only be approved for a limited group of students (e.g., non-science majors).

You will need to gain the support of all stakeholders. You can foster initial acceptance by involving articulation committee members in the formative evaluation and later conducting a summative evaluation. With successful results in a summative evaluation, it is more likely that there will be approval for any student to learn via an online lab. Articulation is more fully discussed in Chapter 12, Articulation and Transfer of Online Courses.

Note

Do what you can to ensure you get the support of the articulation committee.

The Future of Online Labs

It is difficult to predict the future of online labs. However, the reality is that online labs will continue to be created. Some will be of minimal value while others will effectively meet the needs of distance learners and solve the previously mentioned problems of live labs. Some questions will need to be answered:

• Can all labs, ranging from introductory to advanced, be delivered online?
  • In some courses, all of the lab skills can be successfully delivered online, while in others the labs should only be offered live. There is a limit to how much can be conducted online. Would it be reasonable for a student to get a biology degree without ever working with real specimens and a real microscope and other lab equipment? It is likely that everyone would answer this question with a resounding “No”.
• Will administrators of post-secondary institutes or the government require the use of online labs to save costs?
  • Only time will tell. Already many institutions have opted to have labs every second week. The official rationale is that this enables students to be better prepared for labs. The reality is that it is to save costs. One option is to conduct every second lab online. This would accommodate a larger number of students when there are limited lab resources. Note that some governments have already applied pressure to eliminate some labs.
  • Another option is to use online labs to speed up lab time. If students know exactly what procedures they will be doing online, they can spend less time in the live lab, thus freeing up room for more students.

Note

Be ready to answer questions about the effectiveness and economy of an online lab.