Undergraduate physics laboratories - staff perceptions of purposes and outcomes

Susan M Feteris, Richard F Gunstone and David R Mills
Monash University

Abstract

Academic staff and postgraduate student demonstrators are the teaching staff in the undergraduate laboratories in the Physics Department. Most have no formal teacher training, yet provide a laboratory programme that develops diverse skills. Interviews with these staff revealed that while different staff emphasised different aspects of the laboratory experience, as a whole the group hold some very sophisticated views of education and training.

Asked to subjectively rate the success of the first, second and third year laboratory programmes, interviewees provided some very different responses. A definite trend was a lower rating for second year than for first and third year. All of the laboratory exercises have been rated by the authors according to their scientific enquiry levels and by that objective measure second year rates lower than first and third year. A link between the perceived success of the programmes and the scientific enquiry levels of the exercises is clearly indicated. The possibility of revising / restructuring the programme with specific goals of different scientific enquiry levels at each year level is being explored.

During their interviews staff were asked to draw fortune lines indicating the development of equipment skills, data analysis skills, independent planning, report writing and log book (record keeping) skills. Again, some different responses emerged, with positive gradients generally apparent except at second year level, where most staff showed either a zero or a negative gradient. Again, second year seems the area in most need of attention.

Given a fortune line diagram without a specified label, staff were invited to draw a line showing "anything else that you think is developed in the lab programme". Perhaps surprisingly, many suggested intangible, emotive aspects: enthusiasm for physics, confidence, teamwork, 'belonging' to the department. While we can attempt to measure many aspects of the students' development in a laboratory programme, the emotive immeasurables are perhaps of equal importance, as they can influence students' subject choices and career directions. We face the challenge of monitoring those aspects of the students' experiences.

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