eBiolabs – a dynamic laboratory manual for the biosciences.
eBiolabs is a set of integrated tools that help students prepare for laboratory classes and help staff track student achievement. It is an on-line system and so accessible from any computer with an internet connection. eBiolabs has been developed out of necessity by the Department of Biochemistry in the Faculty of Medical and Veterinary Sciences.
By combining interactive media with formative self-evaluation assessments students learn the methods and techniques they will use in the lab, without risking valuable time, equipment or materials. Because students first experiment on-line there is a reduced chance of cognitive overload during the practical and they are more able to concentrate on the wider aims of the experiment, rather than blindly following the lab instructions.
Because eBiolabs includes tools that automatically mark student assignments, and tools that allow academics to easily track student attendance and achievement, the marking and administrative burden associated with running practicals is very significantly reduced.
The Department of Biochemistry has seen such fundamental improvements in student performance that courses to support physiology, pharmacology, microbiology and pathology are currently being developed across the Faculty.
If you would like to use eBiolabs for your course in your university or college email the project director, Gus Cameron.
The impact of eBiolabs has been widely felt. Originally designed to support one 40 creditpoint unit in one School, eBiolabs has spread throughout the Faculty of Medical and Veterinary Sciences at the University of Bristol and is now deployed in three out of four of the Faculty Schools and supports eight (soon to be ten) Units. The number of teaching staff impacted by the use of eBiolabs at Bristol alone is estimated to be 120. The number of student users is currently just under 900.
Since the introduction of eBiolabs the amount of time students spend preparing for laboratory classes increased from an average of 20 minutes to 35 minutes. The percentage agreeing that “laboratory sessions help me understand the rest of my course” increased from 60 % to 74 % while the percentage agreeing that “lab sessions are one of the most enjoyable parts of my course” increased from 22 % to 50 %. Perhaps most importantly, the number of students who agreed that they “felt well prepared when they entered the lab” increased from 18 % to 54 %.
In the academic year 2009-10 eBiolabs prepared2 students for around 7500 hours in the laboratory, and handled around 5000 pieces of student work. By the end of the academic year 2010-11 eBiolabs will have prepared students for over 35000 laboratory contact hours
We have expanded beyond our original aim to support six laboratory practicals in a single 40 credit-point first-year unit, “1G Biochemistry” and are currently supporting 57 practicals in eight different units as shown below and handled more than 22000 pieces of coursework. This would not have happened if we had not achieved our goals.
We have created an open-to-all eBiolabs demonstration5 site containing the complete 1G Biochemistry eBiolabs course. We have licensed eBiolabs to the University of Exeter under a share-and-share-alike no-profit agreement. We have attracted over £100,000 of additional funding for content development and technical enhancements, including a bespoke “Marks, Attendance and Feedback” module that allows real-time tracking of student achievement in any group activity. We have engaged in dissemination activities that have raised direct enquiries from many practitioners in the field who wish to develop and deploy their own local versions of eBiolabs.
But most importantly our work has resulted in our biggest ever recorded increase in student satisfaction with laboratory work.
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