23 Jun Methods A survey was conducted in August
Methods
A survey was conducted in August 2016 consisting of quantitative and qualitative questions on a social media website (Facebook), which received a total of 162 responses in the period of August 3 to August 21; with all participating McMaster University students. The target participants were undergraduate students (incoming first years and recently graduated students included) in the Faculty of Science.
Responses include 98 first year students, 30 second year, 22 third year, 8 fourth year, and 4 recently graduate students. There were two questions about the level and program of the student, six multiple choice questions, and two short answer questions. The questions of this short survey were mainly designed to capture the understanding and expectations of students in their level of study about
lab intensive courses and potential impact on one?s learning. The participants were encouraged to provide their email address to enter a draw for one of three Campus Store gift cards, since the original submissions received absolutely anonymously.
# Question
Introductory
1. Are you a McMaster University student?
2. Which year are you in?
3. Which program are you in?
4. Please provide your McMaster email address for a chance to win a Campus Store gift card (Optional).
Quantitative and Qualitative
5. On a scale from 1 to 5, how likely are you willing to take lab courses in your upcoming year? (Aside from the requirements that you absolutely have to take)
6. If answered 1-2:
What are the reasons that keep you from taking lab intensive courses?
7. If answered 4-5:
What are the reasons that encourage you to enroll in lab intensive courses?
8. Please rate how well lab components enhance your learning experience and complement the lecture material.
9. How satisfied are you with the skills that you have learned in your previous lab courses? (Considering what is expected of a student at your level)
10. How well do you think you understand the importance of every step of the lab protocols that you have performed?
11. How beneficial would additional lab skills practice be to your future education?
12. Would you be interested to participate in monthly lab sessions outside of the classroom to enhance your lab skills?
13. If answered yes to the above question, what specific lab are you interested in learning extracurricularly?
Table 1. Proposed questions in the survey with the aim to capture opinions from students about lab intensive courses as well as extracurricular lab participation. The introductory questions were aimed to receive information about the level and program of study of each student with their provided response.
Results
The last question of the survey about the students? interest in particular lab sessions showed significant results for Biology and Chemistry labs. In addition, great amount of responses mentioned Biomedical, Biochemistry, Anatomy, Microbiology, Physics, and Psychology labs.
Figure 1. Word Cloud of particularly interesting lab sessions, with larger scale words indicating a greater number of mentions by students.
Discussion
A significant number of responses from the survey questions (specifically #11-12, Table 1) supported our initial hypothesis. The majority of participants responded with a high level of interest towards participation in the extracurricular lab sessions, and provided feedback about the kind of labs that they were interested to participate in (Figure 1). With 58.2% of responses from a population of 162, approximately 97 people from this population are very interested to participate in these lab sessions, and 126 students (75.9%) responded that additional lab practice would be desirable and would absolutely help (#11-12, Table 1). Considering that each assigned lab room is limited to approximately 30 students, greater number of students responded to be very interested to participate in monthly extracurricular lab sessions (#12, Table 1)
The second purpose of this survey was to observe the change in students? perspectives on enrolling in lab intensive courses; with the hypothesis that as students reach upper years of their undergraduate program, they tend to prioritize maintaining a high GPA, and with the perspective of lab intensive courses as time consuming and stressful, they would rather invent their time in less content-heavy courses. With this analysis in mind, question #5-10 from Table 1 were also designed to address this question. However, because disproportionate number of responses from each level of study was received, this type of comparison between students of each level of study is not possible.
The extracurricular lab sessions are mainly designed at a first to second year level, for students with some background in science and the scientific experiment. The students in Faculty of Science are specifically the aim for these sessions for the sake of simplicity as well as exposure to some scientific knowledge. We believe additional surveys that can provide insight about the interest of students in other faculties can be helpful. In addition, being able to provide greater resources to accommodate for additional lab sessions can provide the opportunity to participate in extracurricular lab sessions to a larger number of students within the McMaster communit
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