Preliminary results presented at the DUN conference

The IQ-lab project group attended the Danish DUN (Dansk Universitetspædagogisk Netværk) conference on 7-8 October. The theme for the 2021 conference was Presence and Curiosity.

(Above picture: Laura Finne og Jonas Jørgensen)

Laura Finne and Jonas Jørgensen presented their latest results from WP3 and WP4, respectively. The results were presented during a poster session. Laura presented results on her findings from interviews with the students about the role of the laboratory work for their perception of quality learning. Her results show that the laboratory plays an important role in the scaffolding of the students learning and the laboratory has good conditions for timely and elaborate feedback on students work and progress. Further, the laboratory has an important role in providing a bodily structure for the students learning and provide the students with experience of transformations in the laboratory necessary for understanding the epistemic status of data. Jonas’ poster focused on feedback on lab reports, where the coding of interviews shows that various themes can influence the learning potential of feedback on lab reports. This feedback is often well-planned with good ideas and intentions. But it fails to fulfill the potential of these intentions once the students receive the feedback. The function of the feedback thus becomes summative instead of formative. Important factors are student-teacher interaction, intended learning outcomes, and the format of the feedback.

(Above picture: Hendra Agustian)

Hendra Agustian gave a presentation of the latest results from WP2, which investigates how laboratory competences can be described and characterized in university science education. In his presentation, Hendra contextualized the findings from the systematic review in a university pharmaceutical sciences context, through focus groups with 31 laboratory instructors at professorial level. The results reveal that according to the professors, experimental competences are central to learning in the laboratory. Accordingly, development of these competences facilitates development in other clusters of outcomes, particularly higher-order thinking skills and epistemic learning. The professors assign a higher value on open-ended inquiry but argue that there is still a place for more prescribed protocols. By working with real data and being present in the lab, students’ affective experiences improve as they progress through their university education.

If you would like to learn more about the presentations, feel free to contact the IQ-lab team at iqlab@sund.ku.dk.