Friday, March 10, 2000

Science Instructors Debate the Efficacy of Conducting Lab Courses Online By SARAH CARR Thomas M. Lancraft, an assistant professor in the natural-sciences department at Florida's St. Petersburg Junior College, was hesitant when he was asked to create an online laboratory for an introductory biology course he teaches. He wondered how he could teach the nuts and bolts of hands-on biology -- such as using a microscope -- from afar. In the course that Mr. Lancraft eventually created, students are mailed a package of materials and are expected to complete a series of experiments on their own, at home. They are asked to irradiate radish seeds over different periods of time, for instance, and then study the effect of the irradiation on the rate of growth. Despite his initial reluctance, Mr. Lancraft says he believes that in some respects students learn more by completing the labs at home. "Students have more opportunities to problem-solve and gather data. In a traditional lab setting you have only two or three hours to get the data," he says. Mr. Lancraft accepts that some lab skills cannot be taught from a distance. "My justification is that none of these students will ever be in a room with a microscope, and they are never going to need to know how to cut open a cat," he says. Many science instructors are facing the issue of how -- and whether -- to teach laboratories online as more colleges seek to make full degree programs available through distance technologies. Mr. Lancraft, for instance, was asked to teach an online laboratory partly to help students who need a lab course to fulfill a requirement, but are unable to make it to the college's campus. While some instructors have embraced the notion and practice of teaching labs online, others worry about the implications for the teaching of hands-on science. They say it's difficult to teach advanced-level science courses online. "My general concerns are that administrative pressure will lead to an increase in online lab-course offerings as institutions compete for students, and that online lab teaching will develop at the expense of hands-on activities, which are difficult to convert to the online mode," says Betsy Ott, a biology instructor at Tyler Junior College, in Texas. Ms. Ott chairs the technology task force of the National Association of Biology Teachers. She led a symposium on the subject of teaching labs online in October at the organization's annual meeting -- where, she says, there was "no general agreement" that laboratories could or should be taught online. Other scientific societies have also been discussing the issue: Mr. Lancraft says he formed a distance-education committee of the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society in response to member concerns. "I know that some people are being pressured by administrators to put things online, and it may be that to put some materials online isn't the best thing for the students," he says. "It may make the college look better, rather than maintain instructional integrity. As faculty we need to make sure that we don't bankrupt the rigor of a course simply so that our institutions can advertise that they have 35 courses online." Despite such cautionary statements, some science instructors say they have discovered a comfortable niche teaching laboratories online. Peg Johnson, a professor of life sciences at Mesa Community College, in Mesa, Ariz., won an award for instructional innovation from the National Science Teachers Association for an online biology laboratory she teaches to non-majors. While Ms. Johnson is reluctant to use online labs in her courses for biology majors, who need to be familiar with the physical equipment used in research, she says she believes that non-majors can learn a significant amount in Web-based laboratories. In one lesson on the replication of DNA, for instance, her students view online microscope images of onion and fish cells in different stages of replication. The cells are stained so that their chromosomes are visible. "Asking students to order these photographs in their proper sequence provides an opportunity for active instruction," Ms. Johnson says. "Students get immediate feedback on whether they are understanding the concept under study." In order to perform some of the experiments, students are required to purchase supplies from a local store -- such as goldfish, fresh spinach, and liver. "After conducting their experiments, students post their results online on a bulletin board," Ms. Johnson says. "They include a description of their experimental design and the conclusion they reached regarding whether or not they obtained support for their hypothesis." Steven J. Beeson, a faculty associate in the physics and astronomy department at Arizona State University, has offered distance physics labs in an introductory course, but he says he wouldn't teach advanced physics labs from a distance. "It would be difficult to do the upper-level physics labs that I am thinking of primarily online," he says. "Most of them require large pieces of equipment that would be impossible to use at home." The laboratories that Mr. Beeson does offer online are designed to teach students the basics of light and optics. The students purchase a small kit including lenses and filters, which they use to complete a series of conceptual experiments. Philip J. Stephens, a biology professor at Villanova University, says students in his online human-physiology laboratories are able to do the same experiments as students in his in-person course -- the former just aren't able to physically handle the animals used in the labs. In one experiment, for instance, participants in the face-to-face lab place a mouse in a closed chamber and measure the rate at which it consumes oxygen. Mr. Stephens says students in the virtual lab are able to conduct the same experiment using computer simulations. "They essentially do the same thing without touching an animal," he says. Despite such efforts, some professors advise that lab instructors move forward with caution. Ms. Ott says she believes that many professors have been successful at creating exploratory laboratories using distance technology, but she still worries about what the proliferation of online options will mean for the future of teaching science. "Most die-hard science types will not accept computer animations, labeling of computer-generated diagrams, or any strictly visual exercise alone as a valid lab exercise," she says. "Unfortunately, that is a lot of what is being offered as a resource for online labs." "I'm not saying that online labs can't be exploratory," she adds, "but that in most institutions, with the resources -- or lack thereof -- that will be provided, and the administrative push to granting lab credit easily, it's going to be difficult for a motivated educator to provide consistently good experiential lab activities at a distance." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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