Enhancing the student experience of laboratory practicals through digital video guides

Laboratory-based learning allows students to experience bioscience principles first hand. In our experience, practical content and equipment may have changed over time, but teaching methods largely remain the same, typically involving; whole class introduction with a demonstration, students emulating the demonstration in small groups, gathering and analysing data, and concluding with a plenary discussion. We wished to move away from whole class demonstrations and instead encourage a more student-focused learning of procedures to enhance autonomous learning. Using previously developed expertise in videos to support lectures we adapted this approach to laboratory-based learning by producing digital videos as self-directed guides. Videos were produced using domestic-quality equipment and without any professional audio-visual training, resulting in seemingly low production quality. However, students followed the video guides systematically and completed the practicals more efficiently and effectively. Benefits included: development of more autonomous learners; more time to pool and analyse class data; demonstrators’ time being used for higher-level interaction with students; and production of reusable learning objects forming the basis of more enquiry-based laboratory learning.