Laboratory Classes

 

What is a Laboratory Class?

Laboratories provide students with learning experiences quite unlike those associated with either lectures or seminars at MU. Although the conventional image of a lab class includes the mixing of reagent chemicals or perhaps a worm dissection, any experience that emphasizes hands-on investigation rightly qualifies as laboratory work. To some extent, all such classes focus on the verification, illustration, or discovery of those concepts underpinning the course, and in doing so they address basic human curiosity and speak to the “show-me” tradition.

 

The Importance of Laboratories

Because laboratory investigations necessarily are time consuming and because large-enrollment courses often comprise dozens of individual lab sections, graduate teaching assistants customarily are called on to provide the majority of lab instruction, usually under the direction of one or more faculty who bear the overall responsibility for the course. Indeed, for some disciplines the laboratory is the only teaching environment that GTA’s ever experience. If you have the privilege of teaching one of these lab classes, you perhaps will find the following maxims and suggestions useful in approaching your class.

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Teaching Tips for Laboratory Classes

• As a lab instructor, you are not a babysitter, but rather you are an integral part of the instruction team of the course. That role implies multiple responsibilities, some of which extend beyond the lab session per se.
  • If the class includes both lecture and lab components, you need to know what is going on in the lecture as well, not only the topics covered, but also how the lecturer is approaching the material. Students will expect you to know! In knowing how the material is being presented in lecture, you also can avoid unnecessary confusion over terminology or symbols when you talk with your class.
  • You are in a position to bolster or undermine the morale in the class overall. If students complain to your about the course or the lecture, you might be able to score some points with the students by joining in the grousing, but the general course morale may suffer as a result. You should be understanding and encouraging, but negativity towards the course or to others involved in teaching the course helps no one.
  • Chemistry Professor Emeritus John Bauman once succinctly expressed a GTA’s appropriate role in interacting with students—“Don’t touch the freshmen. You don’t know where they’ve been!” As a lab instructor, you are expected to exhibit the same professionalism in and out of the classroom as would be expected of a lecturer.
  • If there are other lab instructors associated with the course, talk with them, exchange ideas, and coordinate your efforts when appropriate. These communications become particularly important if some of the group has previous experience with the course.
  • If you do not have overall responsibility for the course, then you can be an important conduit for information from those individuals who do have that responsibility to the students and in the opposite direction as well. Keep the lines of communication open!
• You may be expected to act as a safety officer for your class. If you teach a chemistry lab, this role is not likely to come as a surprise, but similar responsibilities attach to other courses: a physics lab might deal with high electrical currents or high-intensity light sources, an engineering lab might bring students into close proximity to moving machine parts, and a studio art class might involve the use of molten metal, caustic solutions, organic solvents, or cutting tools. In all of these cases, you must be familiar with and follow the safety rules and protocols for the class, including knowing what to do in the event of an injury. You also may be expected to monitor student dress in the lab, that the students are wearing approved eye protection or appropriate footwear, for example. True, no one really enjoys nagging students and being the “enforcer”, but remember that your students’ health and safety is paramount. Similarly, you may have the primary responsibility for insuring that your students follow established rules for the safe disposal of any waste materials, such as chemicals, broken glass, or biohazards.
• Keep moving! You cannot monitor students or assist in their learning if you are sitting in the corner. Walk around, engage your students in discussions of what they are doing and why, pass along technique tips and otherwise let the students benefit from your knowledge and experience.
• When giving instructions in a lab setting, make sure that everyone “gets the word”. Lab rooms seldom have the favorable acoustical properties of other classrooms, so you may need to repeat the instructions for small groups of students.
• When students ask what an observation means, lead them to discover the answer rather than just telling them the answer. When the discovery aspect is removed from a lab experience, the remaining exercise may be little more than busy work.
• Students want and deserve feedback on their performance. Keep up with your grading, and try to make it clear to your students how your grades were assigned.

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For More Information on Laboratories

Online Resources

Roberts, D. Lab sections. http://www.ksu.edu/catl/labsecs.htm

Haley, A. P., & Nicoll, J. M. (Eds.). The teaching assistant experience. Chapter 3: Laboratory sections. http://www.pitt.edu/ciddeweb/FACULTY_DEVELOPMENT/TA HANDOOK/index.htm

 

Print Resources

McKeachie, W. J. (1999). Teaching tips: Strategies, research and theory for college and university teachers. Houghton Mifflin: Boston. Ch. 12: Laboratory teaching: Teaching students to think like scientists. pp. 149-152.

 

Contributed by John Adams (Professor, Department of Chemistry).

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