Double Trouble: Student perspectives on the transition from online prescribed labs, to in-person and open-ended problem-based labs

Abstract

In the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering (CHBE) at UBC, the lab courses in 2nd and 3rd year require students to complete prescribed (curated and self-contained) experiments, and the 4th year course follows an open-ended Problem-Based Lab (PBL) model which provides students with much less explicit direction. Like other institutions in Canada, all instruction at UBC, including the lab courses, had to shift to remote delivery during the 2020-2021 academic year in response to the pandemic. The result of this is that 3rd and 4th year CHBE students faced either one or two transitions in their lab courses, namely the transition from online to in-person education, and from prescribed to open-ended problem-based labs, each of which presents particular challenges. Students were invited to complete a survey to share their perspectives on the general value of their lab courses for their training as engineers, their perception of the value of online lab course delivery, and their experiences with one or both of the aforementioned transitions. The results are presented here.