Abstract:

Background:
Hands-on laboratory skills are one of the important fundamentals for a biomedical laboratory scientist. Providing undergraduate students in biomedical laboratory science with laboratory hands-on experiences is such important. Before laboratory training, traditionally, students have access to a laboratory compendium which provides them with the theoretical background and principles for methodology, but most importantly, it also contains detailed procedures on how to perform the laboratory analysis. In spite of this, we have experienced students’ preparations to laboratory courses to be to some extent inefficient, especially in topics with a high degree of complexity. To resolve this, an increased work-load is put on the laboratory course instructors ensuring sufficient theoretical repetitions of the procedures and performing practical demonstrations. With a large number of students this learning situation is not ideal. Lessons learned from “old” method of teaching is that the students find it challenging to understand the principles of advanced laboratory analysis in the relatively short time frame of their laboratory training. To improve their preparation for laboratory training we have considered e-learning as a possible ideal strategy for better comprehension, by providing digital explanations and demonstrations on how to practically perform the experimental analyses.

We base our strategy on the fact that learning can occur in a variety of settings (i.e. a virtual classroom or in a physical space). This is what we aim to implement in ePraksis. In this ‘flipped classroom’ model of laboratory teaching, teachers set pre-teaching activities, in which students watch theoretical and practical information online in their own time. To ensure that the students come prepared they have to pass an interactive online test prior to laboratory admittance: the online activity is thus combined with a short online test, giving the students an opportunity to demonstrate self-acquired knowledge and access their understanding online. No demonstration of the laboratory techniques is given within laboratory.

The result of our study regarding ePraksis-no indicate that the majority of biomedical laboratory scientist students’ felt that they were better prepared for the laboratory hands-on tasks when offered a blended learning approach; i.e. visualization of methodology beforehand by video. After introducing the blended learning approach, the course teachers and students appreciated that there was given more hands-on time and more time for individualized guidance. Our study highlights the need for further development of digital learning resources within the field of biomedical laboratory scientist education. Especially, digital resources could be a highly valued asset linking the gap between education arena (university/university college) and health institutions (e.g. hospitals).

Keywords:

Biomedical Laboratory Scientist Education, e-learning, blended learning, flipped learning, supervised professional practice.