How Do You Like Your Science, Wet or Dry? How Two Lab Experiences Influence Student Understanding of Science Concepts and Perceptions of Authentic Scientific Practice

Abstract

This study examines how two kinds of authentic research experiences related to smoking behavior—genotyping human DNA (wet lab) and using a database to test hypotheses about factors that affect smoking behavior (dry lab)—influence students’ perceptions and understanding of scientific research and related science concepts.

Is This Science? Students’ Experiences of Failure Make a Research-Based Course Feel Authentic

“…In contrast, students in the wet lab only reported using the same tools and equipment as scientists do at a significantly higher rate than dry-lab students. Despite the many scientific activities that dry-lab students reported participating in compared with wet-lab students, students in the wet lab had a higher perception that their experience was more similar to what “real scientists” do ( Munn et al. , 2017 ).…”

Moving a Journal Article–Based Upper-Level Microbiology Dry Lab from In-Person to Online Instruction †

“…Because most students had taken a basic “wet lab” in the lower-level class, a “dry lab” format was used for BIO 473 instead. There is an extensive literature about the use of dry or virtual labs in science classes ( 2 – 5 ), which may include online simulations ( 6 – 8 ), case studies or problem-based learning ( 9 , 10 ), and discussion of journal articles ( 11 – 13 ). Since most of my students were also engaged in research projects as part of their Biotechnology program, I chose to use journal articles as the primary resources and to include both analysis of the articles and development of research proposals based on them.…”

“…Because most students had taken a basic "wet lab" in the lower-level class, a "dry lab" format was used for BIO 473 instead. There is an extensive literature about the use of dry or virtual labs in science classes (2)(3)(4)(5), which may include online simulations (6-8), case studies or problem-based learning (9,10), and discussion of journal articles (11)(12)(13).…”

Development of an Online Experiment Platform for High School Biology

“…Finally, in the case of biology, some jurisdictions restrict the use of vertebrate animals for experimentation in K-12 schools (NABT.org 2008). Some ways to address many of these limitations are the use of "dry" bench (e.g., using computer databases) laboratory experiments (Munn et al 2017) or non-traditional laboratory experiments (Brinson 2015;Ma and Nickerson 2006). Non-traditional lab experiments can generally be broken down into two types: virtual experiments, which involve simulated, physically non-existent equipment, and remote experiments, which involve real, physical equipment that the user operates remotely (Brinson 2015;Childers and Jones 2015;Guerra-Varela et al 2016;Heradio et al 2016;Ma and Nickerson 2006).…”