Labs are an integral part of science, as they are crucial to helping students get hands-on experience in order to understand the material.
As students progress through their scientific careers, the labs they partake in positively influence their material retention.
Through the manual experience that labs provide, the application of procedures boosts students’ long-term memory. Students will have the opportunity to utilize their visual, motor, listening, and sensory abilities in order to successfully complete the lab. This combination is more impactful to the memory compared to simply utilizing one or two senses when it is taught in the classroom. Also, when there are errors committed in the lab, physically experiencing that misstep will help students better recall the mistake for the test and be well equipped to avoid it in the future.
Partaking in a lab bridges the learning gap between hands-on and instruction based learning. Students will be able to understand the science behind what they’re learning and how it actually works. This includes the fact that they can translate what they learned into a real life experience and something tangible. This is especially helpful if there are calculations to complete. When students have visually seen a transformation or experiment it makes completing a calculation easier as they can clearly identify what needs to be solved for or find the missing variable to the lab. Labs break the monotony of classroom notes and provide a fun method for students to demonstrate their knowledge, compared to taking a test or a quiz.
Those who believe that labs do not reinforce material because there is an insufficient amount of time to complete a lab and the effects do not last enough for retention need to remember how there is no perfect educational institution. The opportunity to complete a lab is better than no opportunity at all. Additionally, in order to perform the lab students will need to have learned the curriculum, so the lab will only reinforce the material learned and increase retention.
Teachers should take advantage of the benefits of labs and implement them a few times per grading period.
