Are basic laboratory skills adequately acquired by undergraduate science students? How control quality methodologies applied to laboratory lessons may help us to find the answer

The laboratory has always been given a central and distinctive role in scientific education and educators agree about the importance of practical skills and the rich benefits from using laboratory activities [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. Some hands-on laboratory skills are fundamental (e.g., weighing, pipetting, preparation of solutions, measuring pH, laboratory safety, and filtration) and proper instruction of these is essential. Many of these basic operations are routinely performed in the laboratories and some will be critical to the confidence that can be placed in the final result [ 4 ]. For these reasons, different studies and organizations have found that mastery of basic laboratory skills is an important goal in the undergraduate curriculum [ 3 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ]. As the American Chemical Society (ACS) stated, lacking basic practical skills reduces opportunities “to develop the plethora of important scientific and transferable skills that a practical chemistry course should provide” [ 16 ].