VIDEO SUBMISSIONS AID STUDENTS GRASP THE SPREAD PLATE TECHNIQUES BETTER

Students’ laboratory techniques can be brushed up by having teaching videos to show the dos and don’ts. In the online world, various websites hold free, yet high quality lab notes and teaching videos showing the spread plate techniques. However, even after going over these and other in-house resources, students may still find problems when they actually need to do the job. Teaching assistants are crucial to be around to point out any room for improvement on the spot. Very often, teaching assistants are assigned to take care of more than one group of students. While they are monitoring the progress of one group, the other groups' performance might be overlooked.

We have tried asking students to take videos for every plate they spread and they are to choose the best to submit. By doing this, we found all members of the group became more serious about their work. They will pay more attention to what’s going on even when it’s not their turn. Some peer teaching is also obvious. On the teachers’ side, we now have a very good track of every student’s performance on the assigned task. Snapshots/short clips from these submissions also offer a rich and more connected source of materials for the debriefing session to further boost learning effectiveness.