eNotebooks in Practical Classes

Gareth Denyer School of Molecular Bioscience

Dale Hancock Jill Johnston Sashi Kant Vanessa Gysbers

Our Culture

• Instruction in Notebook keeping – Strongly emphasized in all courses

• Paper dominant in research labs

Time for Teaching to Take the Lead

BUT….. • Are there actually any advantages to an

eNotebook in the teaching lab context? • Could we lose our strong notebook culture? • Will our students flounder in real labs? • How will it affect our tutors? … and more

And What to Use?

• Real eNotebook too expensive – Even ‘free’ ones cost; support, servers, etc – And not necessarily suited to 700+ students!

• Need something where the students are creating the content

• SUPPORTED!

ePortfolio

• Professional degrees – Documenting skills, achievements – Collating evidence, certificates

• Reflective narratives – Rich media – Interaction with tutors

• A really extensive ‘back end’ – Learning management system – Gateways for managing student submissions – Lots of tools (forms, quizzes)

Students use PebblePad to store and create content (assets)

Content is submitted to GATEWAYS

GATEWAYS SUBMISSIONS

Tutors see only THEIR students… we see everyone!

Pre-work does away with this…

Students now HAVE to take individual responsibility to come prepared.

Increased engagement outside of lab Dynamic, 24/7 student-tutor exchanges

Course coordinators see any of this that they wish.. (or can bear!)

Formal write up ‘report’

Manually collected data, observations, plans, example calculations, reflections

Original Data from Machine

Processed data (spreadsheets, graphs)

Lab Manual Methods, Background info

Other resources Websites, ‘how to’ movies

Assignments Presentations

Preparedness Engagement

Creativity Interaction

First Round Problems

• Confusion over paper/electronic • Using too many ‘features’

– Achievements, forms – Submissions fragmented

• Different units implementing in different ways • Mismatch with traditional mark scheme • Students did more work!! • Individual submissions, continual feedback =

huge workload increase for tutors

The Right Tool?

• Hard to separate tech/software issues from change push-back

• Graphics integration philosophy – Uni implementation nobbled

• Doesn’t have the perception of being a scientific notebook

• What else? – Professional eNotebooks now have Classroom

editions…. But back end fail!!!

All that effort…

All those resources…

All that feedback…

BUT

• To effectively use ANY notebook, the studentsmust trust it as THEIR resource– NOT just as something to satisfy US

• They need to DEPEND on it– Not just for marks – but for the legacy

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