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Laboratory work in distance educationRobert G. Holmberg & Trilochan S. BakshiPublished online: 19 Mar 2009.
To cite this article: Robert G. Holmberg & Trilochan S. Bakshi (1982) Laboratory work in distance education, DistanceEducation, 3:2, 198-206, DOI: 10.1080/0158791820030203
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Laboratory work in distance education
Robert G. Holmberg and Trilochan S. Bakshi
A major concern in distance education is how to overcome the problemsassociated with laboratory components of courses. In this paper wereview the general importance of laboratory work for students, summa-rise the advantages and disadvantages of conventional and home-studylaboratory activities, describe five basic alternatives to conventionallaboratories, and outline three areas where improvements need to bemade in the offering of laboratories at a distance.
GENERAL IMPORTANCE OF LABORATORY WORK
Courses that can use laboratory activities range from elementary tograduate school level. They include courses related to the basic sciencesof biology, chemistry, geology and physics; courses in applied sciencesor technology such as various aspects of agriculture, engineering,computing and health sciences; courses in social sciences such as psy-chology and anthropology; and — if we stretch the definition of theterm 'laboratory' (usually defined as a place where one does experi-ments) we could include certain courses that use language 'laboratories'or special workshops connected with fine arts (e.g., pottery, weaving,sculpture).
The benefits of laboratory work are the same for all students — whetherthey be children or adults studying in schools or in their homes.Laboratory activities are used to:
• introduce new concepts or review those studied previously;
• provide direct experience with laboratory equipment, techniques andspecimens;
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• provide opportunities to test hypotheses related to the associatedcourses;
• allow practice in practical problem-solving, that may include the useof various scientific methods; and
• increase intellectual stimulation about or appreciation for the subjectinvolved (Holt et al., 1979; Rasmussen, 1970; Shulman and Tamir,1973).
CONVENTIONAL vs HOME STUDY LABORATORYACTIVITIES: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES
There are six major considerations that must be taken into accountwhen any type of laboratory activity is prepared, namely:
• the target audience (i.e., age, sex, previous education and experience,as well as social and cultural environments of the students who arelikely to take the course);
• the subject matter or content of the course;
• the pedagogical considerations of how the course should be taught;
• economic considerations;
Target audience Subject matter
Technology Pedagogy
Safety Economics
Figure 1. Relationships between six major aspects that affectthe planning of any laboratory work for students
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• safety of the students as well as others who may come into contactwith the laboratory materials; and
• the current state of technology in terms of available equipment.
All of these factors are interdependent (Figure 1) but their relativeimportance depends upon one's point of view. For example, if you area physics teacher you may consider the subject matter as most impor-tant. However, if you are in charge of finances, you may regard economicconsiderations to be paramount. The emphasis placed on these factorsvaries with the people involved.
Fixed Flexiblet i m e ^Conventional... Audio-tutorial... Home-Study\ t i m e
and N • S andplace place
Figure 2. Laboratory activities viewed as a continuum in terms offlexibility of students' use of time and space
Laboratory activities also can be viewed (Figure 2) as a continuum thatranges from conventional laboratories where students work in groupsat fixed times and places, through audio-tutorial methods that allowmore flexibility in time, to home-study approaches that involve indivi-dual students working at times and locations of their convenience. Inthis paper we consider only the two extremes of this continuum, i.e.,conventional and home-study activities.
For conventional laboratories, there are the following potential advan-tages: economies related to mass instruction, immediate feedback forstudents who encounter problems, discussion between students, directsupervision of student safety, student access to expensive or evenunique equipment and specimens, the possibility of quick changes ofplans if something goes wrong or is not available, and the familiarityof the process for both students and teaching staff.
The major disadvantage of conventional laboratories is the considerablerestriction that they impose upon students trying to get to the sameplace at the same time. In addition, there are the high costs of provid-ing, at nearly one time, sufficient laboratory space, equipment and stafffor all students. These logistic and financial restrictions greatly limitwhat students can achieve in a course.
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Home laboratory activities provide some distinct advantages to stu-dents. The most important advantage is related to student convenience.As with other aspects of distance education, home laboratory activitiesallow students to: avoid time-wasting journeys; study when and wherethey wish to so that they can fulfill job, family and social commitments;work at their own pace; and repeat observations as necessary. Thismethod of instruction also makes laboratory-related education availableto persons who normally could not attend traditional classes. Such per-sons include those who live in remote areas, have health problems, areconfined in prisons, or travel a great deal (e.g., those in sales or in thearmed forces) (Holmberg, 1977). In addition, activities done at homeallow students the opportunities to extend observations over relativelylong periods. Finally, the capital costs of buildings and equipment aremuch less for preparing and offering home labs than for conventionalteaching methods.
There are, however, three major disadvantages with laboratory activitiesdone at home. Firstly, developmental costs usually exceed those associ-ated with conventional laboratory work. Even seemingly minor items,such as packaging, may require substantial amounts of planning andfield trials before problems, such as safe transport, economically accept-able materials and inventory concerns, can be overcome. Secondly,there are the problems of safety. In considering safety one must notonly consider the students who do the experiments, but also suchpeople as those who assemble, store, ship and deliver the materials aswell as children who may be present in the students' homes. Thus, stu-dents and many of the institution's staff have to learn appropriate pre-cautions for eye and skin protection, storage and disposal methods, therudiments of first-aid, and how to handle accidental spills and put outfires. Finally, there are the difficulties involved in obtaining trans-ferability of courses that use these, still rather unconventional, methodsof delivery.
To demonstrate that these problems are real, all one has to do isexamine the course offerings of institutions engaged in distance educa-tion. For example, in Canada and the United States there is a total ofseventy-five colleges and universities that offer, at a distance, twenty ormore three-credit courses (Canadian Association for University Con-tinuing Education, 1980; Hunter, 1980). However, less than twenty-seven per cent of these offer a 'substantial' (i.e., a total of five or morecourses in the fields of biology, chemistry, geology or physics) numberof courses that may involve laboratory work (Figure 3).
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I • r-i > - , - " - • > - _ -
Figure 3. Distribution of institutions in Canada and the United Statesthat offer twenty or more college or university courses at a distance.
Those institutions that offer a 'substantial' number of laboratory coursesare shown as solid squares.
This should not be interpreted to mean that the difficultues of offeringlaboratory activities at a distance are insurmountable for most institu-tions. Indeed, we think that courses which require laboratory work arefeasible for nearly all institutions that offer programmes in distanceeducation. Thus even at early as 1925, rural students in New Zealandreceived laboratory materials for home learning (Shelley, 1932).Currently the largest university in the United Kingdom, the Open Uni-versity, uses home laboratory activities to help its students acquirelaboratory experiences. And now, these methods are being used in anumber of developing countries (Siele and Hacker, 1977).
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ALTERNATIVES TO CONVENTIONAL LABORATORIES
In distance education, there are five basic alternatives to conventionallaboratories. We will first outline these alternatives, in order of increasingdevelopmental costs, and then explore them a little further with aspecific example.
The first alternative is simply to eliminate all laboratory activities. Thisis the easiest, cheapest and, unfortunately, the most common choicemade by institutions that begin to deliver courses at a distance. Thoughthis alternative can be justified, it has serious long term consequencesfor the school's curriculum.
If an institution has on-campus as well as external students, the nexteasiest alternative is to make the existing laboratory facilities availableto both types of students. Often this simply means opening the labora-tories at times when on-campus students are not using the facilities.
When the home-study student is located beyond a reasonable travellingdistance from the institution, the next alternative is to use locallaboratory facilities. However, there are problems with this alternative.They include things such as liability concerns for possible damage doneby students, conflicts with cleaning staff who often work in the same'off-hours' as the distance education students, and accessibility to thelaboratory by public and private transportation.
The fourth alternative is to send the laboratory to the students ratherthan have the students come to the laboratory. There are many possi-bilities within this alternative. The most common method is the prepara-tion of a laboratory kit. The kit may contain all items needed by thestudents or it may contain only those things that students can notreadily obtain locally. These kits are usually sent via the local postalsystem. However, as most postal systems restrict the mailing of manycommonly-used chemicals, such as acids and flammable solvents, com-mercial carriers or the institution's own transport facilities may have tobe used.
The fifth alternative is that of substitution. In its simplest form, substi-tution may mean that instructors provide sets of data for students toanalyse and speculate upon. However, substitution often involves theuse of various audio/visual materials that allow students to observe andrecord information generated by otherwise inaccessible equipment.Substitutions also include the use of computer simulations. Thesesimulation activities allow students to examine phenomena (e.g.,ballistics, chemical reactions and genetic crosses) that may involve
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dangerous procedures, inordinate amounts of time, or equipment moreexpensive than computer costs (see Smith and Sherwood, 1976).
We will now explore these five alternatives further by discussing anexample of an expensive and delicate piece of laboratory equipment —the compound light microscope. A microscope is almost indispensablein a biology laboratory so much so that the use or non-use of a micro-scope often determines if a biology course will be acceptable to otherinstitutions for credit transfer. Though a microscope is a fairly specialis-ed piece of equipment, alternatives are available and we think thatmodern technology can also be used to develop alternatives for other'indispensable' laboratory equipment such as balances, chemical models,optical benches, spectrophotometers, and pH meters.
The first of the five alternatives is to eliminate the microscope. Thecrucial question in making this decision is to determine whether it issufficient for the students to know how a microscope works, what itscapabilities and limitations are rather than how it is used.
If it is deemed important that students know how to use a microscope,it must then be asked whether the students can come to a centrallaboratory on certain evenings, on week-ends, or in the summer.
The third alternative is to use some local facility that already has micro-scopes or can store them, and is willing to allow students access. Thesefacilities may be available in the laboratories of secondary schools,technical schools, industrial complexes, and hospitals involved in teach-ing nurses:
The fourth alternative includes the possibilities of sending to studentsbasic components for assembly, sending conventional microscopes, orsending special portable microscopes.
Simple plastic lenses and cardboard tubes have been used by studentsto learn the fundamentals of microscope construction and theory(Norberg and von Blum, 1975). However, it is also possible for studentsto build fairly sophisticated microscopes in the same way that someelectronic service people learn how to build radios, oscilloscopes, andtelevisions from components sent to their homes by commercial institu-tions.
Conventional equipment may be sent by mail or delivered to the stu-dents by truck, boat or even plane. For example, in British Columbia,Canada, North Island College uses trucks and a boat to transport specialis-ed equipment to students in remote areas of Vancouver Island. In effect,
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these vehicles are travelling laboratories.
Portable microscopes are not common but are available in various formsas 'field' microscopes from commercial manufacturers. Also, the BritishOpen University designed and manufactured its own portable micro-scope for use by its students.
The fifth possibility, that of substitution, can be used as a preliminarystep in teaching microscope use or as a complete substitution for theprovision of actual microscopes. Different substitutions take variousforms such as transparencies, filmstrips, microfiche cards, films, orvideotapes. There are several commercial devices that can use the firstthree kinds of materials to provide inexpensive colour illustrations.However, mechanisms for showing motion are still very expensive.
We believe that if teachers explore these five alternative solutions alongthe lines indicated above for a microscope, many of the problemsassociated with offering laboratory activities at a distance can be over-come.
FURTHER IMPROVEMENTS
Before laboratory work can assume its full and proper place in distanceeducation, there are three major areas in which improvements need tobe made.
The first is increased communication and co-operation between institu-tions involved in developing alternatives to conventional laboratoryinstruction. It is often the case that one institution will develop a setof procedures or a home lab kit but the work has to be redone else-where because other institutions either do not know of the develop-ments or cannot obtain official permission to use the materials (e.g.,proper copyright permissions were not obtained when the materialswere developed).
The second area, that has been briefly mentioned above, is the problemof credit transfer of distance education courses to conventional and,even, non-conventional institutions. Though appropriate courses forstudents at a distance may be somewhat different in their approach anddelivery, the question remains as to whether or not they will be accept-able to other institutions for transfer of credits. Even though coursesdelivered at a distance have a long and successful history, many peoplestill regard them as inferior and unacceptable.
The third area involves technological improvements that should decrease
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costs and increase efficiencies. This includes things such as miniaturisa-tion of electrical apparatus and mass production of specialised equip-ment. A specific example is the possible use of hand-held programmablecalculators for courses involving statistics and calculus. This area alsoincludes improved methods of communication between students andstaff of the teaching institution which, in turn, will improve the offer-ing of all aspects of the learning process (Kelly and Anandam, 1978).
References
Canadian Association for University Continuing Education (1980) Directory of universitycorrespondence courses, 1980. Waterloo, Ontario: Correspondence Programme, University ofWaterloo for the Association.
Holmberg, B. (1977) Distance education: a survey and bibliography. New York: Nichols.
Holt, C.E., Abramoff, P., Wilcox Jr., L.V. and Abell, D.L. (1969) Investigative laboratory pro-grammes in biology. Bioscience 19, 12, 1104-1107.
Hunter, J. (ed.) (1980) Guide to independent study through correspondence instruction, J980-1982. New Jersey: Peterson's Guides for the National University Extension Association.
Kelly, J.T. and Anandam, K. (1978) Instruction at a distance is personalised through tech-nology. JournaJ of Personalised Instruction 3, 3, 162-164.
Norberg, A.M. and von Blum, R. (1975) Take-home laboratory activities: one answer to thetime and space problem. American Institute of Biological Sciences Education Review 4, 4, 1-4.
Rasmussen, F.A. (1970) Matching laboratory activities with behavioural objectives. Bioscience20, 5, 292-294.
Shelley, J. (1932) The box scheme. Journal of Adult Education 5, 4, 393-395.
Shulman, L.S. and Tamir, P. (1973) Research on teaching in the natural sciences, p.1098-1148.In: Travers, R.M.W., (ed.) Second handbook of research on teaching. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Siele, J.A. and Hunter, G. (1977) Teaching science at a distance. Cambridge, England: Inter-national Extension College Broadsheets on Distance Learning No. 10.
Smith, S.G. and Sherwood, B.A. (1976) Educational uses of the PLATO computer system.Science 192, 344-352.
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