Digital Labs as a Complement to Practical Laboratory Training for Bachelor and Master Biomedicine Students

Abstract

<p>Digital laboratories and simulations have been employed as a teaching method for decades. Their main purpose was to complement theoretical teaching and practical laboratory training. Recent studies have also shown that digital laboratories could enhance students’ learning through increasing intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy. In this study, we examined the student perception of using digital laboratories in 13 courses within Biomedicine/Life Science at two different universities, University of Turku and Karolinska Institutet. Using two different sets of survey questionnaires, we collected students’ responses and comments students after the end of each course. Students were generally positive to the use of digital laboratories to complement their study. They reported they experienced a moderate increase in motivation and interests to the course content. The digital laboratories could, to some extent, help them integrate theory and practice, and prepare for the real-life laboratory sessions. These findings helped university teachers to gain insight on course design when incorporating digital laboratories in university courses. In this study, we also found that digital laboratories, at this present setting, could not support the teamwork and interactions between students that took place in the real-life laboratory sessions. Since a large amount of data was collected in digital laboratory modules, learning analytics would in the future help to identify the difficult concepts that would require follow-up in other teaching and learning activities. Learning analytics would also provide valuable insight for an informed decision when choosing appropriate education tools for the future generation.</p>