Contents

• What is practical Teaching?
• Why Practical Teaching?
• Anatomy of a Practical
• Practical Types and Uses
• What makes a good practical?
• A Balanced Approach to Lab Design
• Health and Safety
• Working with GTAs
• Student Preparation

What is practical Teaching?

Practical work is viewed by the vast majority of engineering/science teachers as an essential and integral part of education (this is of course confirmed by the fact that it is mandatory in accreditation criteria). Practical work can encompass many different components, which can be divided into two main groups as described in Woodley (2009), as follows:

1. Core activities: These include ‘hands-on’ activities such as different investigations, laboratory techniques and procedures, as well as fieldwork. These types of activities can help enhance the development of students’ practical laboratory skills, as well as helping them to understand key scientific concepts and phenomena.
2. Directly related activities: These are closely connected to the above core activities, and include practical demonstrations performed by the teacher, planning and designing scientific investigations and analysis of data.

These can include activities such as use of computer simulations, modelling, use of surveys, presentations, group discussion and role plays as well as the typically though of laboratory based work. Though much of the content of this unit is based around laboratory based work it is relevent to these other practical teaching options.

Millar (2009) described a practical activity as ‘Any science teaching and learning activity which at some point involves the students, working individually or in small groups, in observing or manipulating objects to develop understanding’.

The main purposes of practical work are to engage students, aiding them to develop many important skills. In fact, practical work can support learning in a multitude of ways ranging from ‘Personal learning and thinking skills’ to ‘How science works’. The overriding principle, however is ‘to make links between the concrete and abstract worlds’.

These practical activities undertake a wide variety of implementation: 

• Across all years, 1st year to Master’s Project
• Variable in length 1 hour to 1 semester (or more)
• Element of a taught module or own module

Why Practical Teaching?

Generally the reasons for practical teaching are divided into 3 main areas:

1. Cognitive arguments: It is thought that practical activities can relate to knowledge and understanding
2. Affective domains: This relates to the enjoyment and motivational aspects of practical work
3. Skills argument: It can help develop many transferable skills

Anatomy of a Practical

We can think about practical teaching exercises in terms of Kolb's Learning Cycle - have a look at the video below. How does this relate to your lab teaching?

Do you need this a transcript for this video? Open it in a new window.

Practical Types and Uses

There are a number of different types of practicals, each one has advantages and disadvantages for different activities:

Traditional / “cook-book”
This is probably the most common type of practical used. For this type of practical a procedure is provided to the student for them to follow. It allows them to try a new technique or skill.

Investigative
In this type of practical, students use there knowledge of a theory or skill to investigate a piece of equipment (or something else). They develop their own experimental procedure to test the theory, this is often supported by simple operating instructions, but not a full procedure to follow. For example Thornton (1972).

Open-ended exercise
This type of practical typically provides students with an aim or objective and students need to select what techniques or skills they need to solve the problem. There is no procedure to follow and often no single answer. For example Morgan & Carter (1993).

Inquiry
In inquiry based practicals students are given a problem to solve rather than a method to follow. This means that students practice making critical decisions about hypotheses, predictions, and the design and execution of the experiment. For example Uno (1989).

Open-inductive
In this type of practical students make observations about the system they are studying and from these observations they start to build a hypothesis. The aim is to generate meanings from the data set collected in order to identify patterns and relationships to build a theory.

Cooperative & peer-team
All practicals can take place as a team/group. However practicals can be built around students undertaking different activities to perform a single operation. An example is Cooper (2012).

What Makes a Good Practical?

A Balanced Approach to Lab Design

Health and Safety

It is important to think about health and safety issues when running practical sessions.

Some of these may be what we normally think of during designing experiments, but there are also others we need to think about - look at these animated slides on health and safety concerns around teaching labs.

Click "Start" to begin (please note there is no sound).

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Have a look at the current general risk assessments below which you will use during your lab teaching:

Practical Teaching

PC clusters

Working With GTAs

The slides below have been taken from a study with students about GTAs, you might want to share the information and types with your GTAs:

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Student Preparation

Due to people needing to provide more practical activities online the introductions or even the experiment its self may need to be recorded. The table below has some tips for creating introductory videos to practical activities taken from https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2019.1593322.

References

What is Practical Teaching?

• Woodley, E. 2009, School Science Review, 91, 49-51.
• Millar, R. 2009, Centre for Innovation and Research in Science Education, University of York.

Why Practical Teaching?

• Holt et al., 1969, Bioscience, 19, 1104-1107.
• Helm & Novak, 1983, Proceedings of the International Seminar on Misconceptions & Education Strategies in Science & Maths.
• Novak, 1987, Proceedings of the 2nd International Seminar on Misconceptions & Education Strategies in Science & Maths.
• Uno & Bybee, 1993, Developing Biological Literacy, Colorado Springs.
• Uno & Bybee, 1994, Bioscience, 44(10), 553-557.

Types of Effective Practical

• Sundberg & Moncada, 1994, Bioscience, 44(10), 698-704
• Thornton, 1972, The Laboratory: A Place to Investigate, Washington DC.
• Morgan & Carter, 1993, Investigating Biology: A Lab Manual for Biology, Redwood City.
• Uno, 1989, Botany 114 Workbook, Kandall/Hunt.
• Cooper, 2012, Cooperative Chemistry: Laboratory Manual, McGrawHill.

GTAs – the frontline

• Wood, 1990, Biochemical Education, 18(1), 9-12.
• O’Toole, 2012, A Report for the Australian Council of Deans of Science, Monash University.
• Rice, 2009, Tertiary Science Education in the 21st Century.
• Rushin et al., 1997, The American Biology Teacher, 59(2), 86-90.
• Dotger, 2010, Journal of College Science Teaching, 39(3), 71-76.
• Turner et al., 2003, Journal of Chemical Education, 80(10), 1206-1210.

General

• National Research Council. Science Teaching Reconsidered: A Handbook. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 1997.
• Clara Davies, 2008, “Learning and teaching in laboratories: An engineering subject centre guide”, AdvanceHE.