The practical content

The subject matter of the practical sessions may be prescriptive, but nevertheless stimulating, for students in their early years or purely organisational for later year project work.

Generating high quality practical work supported by good learning material, information and training material for laboratory demonstrators and the assessment regime is enormously time consuming. One person week in development for every three hours of student work would not be unusual.

Before generating practical work from scratch consider what might already be available. Is there anything available from the Internet that can be bought, licensed or utilised? Some product manufacturers have developed considerable tutorial resources to help promote their name and product. What might be available from other Schools in the University?

Good practical work will enthuse and stimulate students. By its very nature it is student centred and experiential. Students are learning by doing and all the educational evidence is that this style of learning is effective. If the tasks are stimulating then students will develop an enthusiasm for their subject and for their learning which will impact upon their other studies.

To this end, work where students follow a straightforward recipe should be avoided wherever possible, or augmented by an open-ended project style aspect that will cause students to think about what they have undertaken. There may, of course, be professional body requirements that have to be satisfied of either a general or specific nature.

Thought should be given to the learning material for the practical work. Will it be produced in hardcopy or, especially for computer-based work, delivered entirely from the computer? Should objectives be set during an interactive, pre-practical workshop without extensive support material? If in hardcopy, will each experiment or task be separately documented or will a student work manual be produced? Should the material be given out in advance and should students be expected to prepare for the work, or should it be given out on arrival with the task completed in a finite time?