Evaluation of Student Learning in Remotely Controlled Instrumental Analyses

Abstract

The Canadian Remote Sciences Laboratories (CRSL) website (www.remotelab.ca) was successfully employed in a study of the differences in the performance and perceptions of students' about their learning in the laboratory (in-person) versus learning at a remote location (remote access). The experiment was completed both in-person and via remote access by 70 students, who performed essentially the same, academically, in the two modes. One set of students encountered the in-person laboratory first and then did the remote laboratory, while the other set of students did the activities in the reverse order. The student perception survey results (n = 46) indicated that the students found both experimental scenarios to be at appropriate levels of difficulty, clear to understand, and did not overall prefer one way of completing the experiment over the other. However, they felt that they learned more about the theory of the experiment, more hands-on skills, and more about the operation of the instrument when they performed the experiment in the laboratory in the presence of an instructor. They also believed that they learned more about the instrument operation from their laboratory partner when they completed the experiment in the laboratory, but learned more from their partner about the operation of the instrument software when they completed the procedure from a remote location.

Laboratory activities to support online chemistry courses: a literature review

“…There are examples of experiments employing FTIR, UV-vis, GC, 79 AA, 80 single crystal X-ray diffraction, 81 voltammetry, 82 NMR, 83 GCMS, 84,85 and ICP-OES. 86 In most cases, student perceptions and learning of the remote experiments were found to be equivalent to the in-person experiments. In a more structured study, some foundational constructs from the technology acceptance model were used to evaluate the students' technological acceptance of the remote laboratory with positive results from the respondents.…”

Providing Effective Teaching Laboratories at an Open University

“…Students do the synthesis in a supervised laboratory and leave their samples, which are loaded onto an autosampler of the GC instrument to be remotely selected and examined later at their leisure. Together with collaborative research partners we have explored access to a variety of different analytical instruments and have found in general that the remote experience is equivalent to the in-lab experience (Meintzer et al, 2017). It is interesting to note that one of the most valued components reported by students has been the real-time video image of the instrument as they are controlling it, as seen in Fig.…”

Teaching Analytical Instrumentation Through Remote Access – A Gas Chromatography Perspective

“…These range from titration experiments − and amperometry and fluorescence spectroscopy to multiple week research-based activity . Prior to the pandemic, remote lab experiments were reported somewhat intermittently; examples include nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS), gas chromatography (GC)–mass spectrometry (MS), inductively coupled plasma (ICP)–optical emission spectrometry (OES), chemical reaction observations via light and temperature change, and various electrochemical exeriments . The pandemic has provided a new impetus to investigate this delivery mode.…”