Can hands-on learning be accessible and effective for every student’s unique needs? It’s a question that Dr. Melissa Hills is dedicating her career to answering – though the solution may never be perfect.
The biological sciences prof and Chancellor’s Research Chair discussed her work investigating barriers to learning outcomes in biology labs on a recent episode of the Office of Research Services’ Research Recast(ed) podcast.
“There are a lot of time pressures because you’re doing experiments that have to be finished,” says Dr. Hills of the labs. “The protocols they’re following are very detailed and complex, and so it can be a very challenging learning environment.”
She set out to see what frustrations students were having in those labs, redesign the curriculum and provide learning supports. The outcomes, she believes, will likely transfer to other science labs and experiential learning opportunities.
Her research includes working with students with disabilities as partners to re-design laboratory curriculum to reduce learning barriers for all students. Often, these barriers can be addressed with simple solutions that can be easily implemented.
“We sometimes think that it’s got to be this really big, innovative, cool intervention,” Dr. Hills told Research Recast(ed) host Kelsie Howlett. But, she says, sometimes solutions can be obvious and straightforward. In describing her work with student research assistants Sam Dancey and Lauren Tkalcic, she explained, “One thing we noted was that the way that the lab manual was written was really dense and really jargony, and the terminology that was being used was not consistent.”
Ensuring that instruction and expected outcomes are explained clearly is part of Universal Design for Learning, a framework that outlines flexible and inclusive learning opportunities, which Dr. Hills is a proponent of. But simply writing out those explanations in course resources isn’t enough for students with different learning needs.
“Another thing we did was add more visual resources to the lab manual,” says Dr. Hills. “We made sure we were following best principles for accessible documents so that, for example, if we have a student with a slight impairment, they could still see and access that information.”
She aims to make those visuals even more helpful through an upcoming interdisciplinary partnership with MacEwan design prof Alexandria Keays, and student Michael Obrigewitch, which will cater to student needs using more detailed and accessible images. Dr. Hills and Tkalcic also created video resources that students could return to at different parts of their lab work. In addition, Dr. Hills notes that offering flexible deadlines is another simple solution that eases the burden on student learning.
But even with all of these adjustments and improvements, there’s still more work to be done to make labs accessible to all students.
“I think there are always going to be opportunities to look at it and go, ‘oh, but we could make this a little bit better,’” she says. “It’s very much still a work in progress.”