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Nicotine is a major alkaloid in tobacco plants and an addictive component of tobacco products. Some bacteria grow on tobacco plants and have evolved the ability to metabolize nicotine. As part of our microbiology teaching lab, we used minimal media with nicotine as the sole carbon source to isolate nicotine-degrading bacteria from tobacco leaves and commercial tobacco products. Students then identified these bacteria using 16S rRNA sequencing and biochemical assays and assessed their ability to catabolize nicotine using UV spectroscopy. Students were able to isolate and identify 14 distinct genera that can metabolize nicotine. This modification of the commonly used unknown project gave students firsthand experience using selective media, and students got the opportunity to work with largely uncharacterized microbes with a real-world connection to public health, which increased student engagement. Students had the opportunity to think critically about why nicotine-degrading microorganisms associate with tobacco plants, why there are different bacteria that use the same specialized metabolism, and how these organisms are isolated from other bacteria using selective media.

When engineering students are unable to evaluate the validity of their solutions, they are unprepared to solve complex, real-world engineering problems that require decomposition or knowledge transfer. A proper framework is key to successful implementation and can encourage more institutions to adopt problem-solving engineering labs. This paper documents a design framework the authors developed to create different mechanical engineering problem-solving lab modules. The framework offers a systematic approach for educators to strategically plan, create, and execute a series of interconnected laboratory activities spanning multiple weeks. The methodology aims to reinforce students' understanding of previously learned engineering principles by applying them to address practical issues associated with grand engineering challenges or daily problems. A three-credit, fourth-year laboratory course was designed to follow a Revised Bloom's taxonomy hierarchy (Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create) to improve students' metacognition skills when problem-solving. This paper focuses on the detailed course design of a three-week module in the mid-semester within that larger course, emphasizing two cognitive skills: Analysis and Evaluation. Two case studies are presented, each addressing a real-world engineering problem to capture students' interest. At various stages of each lab module, survey data was collected to evaluate student perception in applying critical thinking skills when problem-solving. The majority of students felt the labs demonstrated real-world applications to the respective engineering topics across the mechanical engineering curriculum and encouraged them to apply analytical skills to solve problems.

General education science courses at a Canadian postsecondary institution implemented "Beyond Labz" virtual science labs. Faculty members teaching vocational science-related courses tested this resource. This qualitative study explores faculty member and learner perceptions of the efficacy of these virtual labs in terms of ease of use, designing hands-on activities, student engagement, and accessibility. Data are collected via a focus group, surveys, meetings, and interview notes. The study found that learners and faculty members may have different perceptions of the importance of virtual labs for the development of various skills. From the data, five themes emerge related to addressing the needs of diverse learners and utilizing multiple affordances of virtual labs. Although science virtual labs are perceived as a useful tool for teaching and learning science, faculty members identify barriers such as the need to develop digital literacy skills and initial training and institutional support when introducing new tools. Recommendations for effective science virtual labs curriculum integration are included.

Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have brought society closer to the long-held dream of creating machines to help with both common and complex tasks and functions. From recommending movies to detecting disease in its earliest stages, AI has become an aspect of daily life many people accept without scrutiny. Despite its functionality and promise, AI has inherent security risks that users should understand and programmers must be trained to address. The ICE (integrity, confidentiality, and equity) cybersecurity labs developed by a team of cybersecurity researchers addresses these vulnerabilities to AI models through a series of hands-on, inquiry-based labs. Through experimenting with and manipulating data models, students can experience firsthand how adversarial samples and bias can degrade the integrity, confidentiality, and equity of deep learning neural networks, as well as implement security measures to mitigate these vulnerabilities. This article addresses the pedagogical approach underpinning the ICE labs, and discusses both sample activities and technological considerations for teachers who want to implement these labs with their students.

Over the past few years at Columbus State University, the learning support math faculty and director have focused on the importance of training academic coaches to effectively engage students in corequisite support math with key practices implemented in an emporium-based model for our corequisite support math labs. This model consists of experienced math faculty as instructional facilitators and coordinators and student peers as academic coaches to provide support in the areas of coaching, tutoring, and mentoring. The purpose of this implementation is to empower our students to acquire knowledge, to strengthen interpersonal and academic skills, and to create a sense of belonging at the institution in order to attain career goals. To effectively engage students in these efforts, the learning support math faculty and director have focused on the implementation of solid training for our academic coaches based on best practices in the areas of growth mindsets, problem-solving, emotional intelligence, and motivational interviewing.

The study investigates students' ability to analyze visual literacy and digital literacy through open-ended inquiry activities with astronomical observations and Heaven View application. The investigation consists of assignments for students to carry out six different variations of observational activities. Supervision is given in introductory astronomy lectures before and after using open-ended inquiry as direct observation and indirect observation activities. We discuss the implicits for open-ended inquiry learning that encourage students to participate in observational activities. Students are expected to develop several 21st century skills through an open-ended inquiry process, including visual-digital literacy. A pretest-posttest control group design with an open-ended inquiry model was applied to the experimental group and a direct instruction model to the control group. This study uses inferential statistical parametric methods, using ANCOVA. Students' visual-digital literacy data were obtained using the pretest and posttest. The results showed that a statistically significant difference between open-ended inquiry through astronomical laboratory observations assisted by Heaven View application compared to direct model recognition. Students' visual-digital literacy has increased due to the application of this learning model. The implications of this research can encourage students' visual-digital science literacy. Other educators can adopt open-ended learning experiences through the Heaven View app-assisted astronomical observation labs to promote visual-digital literacy in science.

Disabled children of color (ages 3-8) face multiple, intersecting oppressions in schools and are more likely to be excluded and/or harshly punished for minor behavioral issues compared to white and/or non-disabled peers. Approaches that center multiple stakeholders (families, teachers, and administrators) using a formative intervention called a Learning Lab (LL) have worked to reduce discipline disparities among secondary and upper primary students of color with disabilities (Bal, 2016). Knowing that discipline disparities can start as early as preschool (Kulkarni et al., 2021), however, we examined how LL (re)mediates exclusionary and harsh discipline practices for young children of color with disabilities. We present qualitative case studies of six California-based stakeholders (four teachers, a parent, and an administrator) who participated in LL sessions virtually from 2021-2022. We share findings and lessons learned from constructing virtual LL spaces to reduce exclusionary and harsh discipline for young children of color with disabilities.

This exploratory study focuses on the use of ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tool, by undergraduate engineering students in lab report writing in the major. Literature addressing the impact of ChatGPT and AI on student writing suggests that such technologies can both support and limit students' composing and learning processes. Acknowledging the history of writing with technologies and writing as technology, the development of GAI warrants attention to pedagogical and ethical implications in writing-intensive engineering classes. This pilot study investigates how the use of ChatGPT impacts students' lab writing outcomes in terms of rhetorical knowledge, critical thinking and composing, knowledge of conventions, and writing processes. A group of undergraduate volunteers (n = 7) used ChatGPT to revise their original engineering lab reports written without using ChatGPT. A comparative study was conducted between original lab report samples and revisions by directly assessing students' lab reports in gateway engineering lab courses. A focus group was conducted to learn their experiences and perspectives on ChatGPT in the context of engineering lab report writing. Implementing ChatGPT in the revision writing process could result in improving engineering students' lab report quality due to students' enhanced lab report genre understanding. At the same time, the use of ChatGPT also leads students to provide false claims, incorrect lab procedures, or extremely broad statements, which are not valued in the engineering lab report genre.

A compelling body of research suggests that students from racially marginalized and minoritized (RMM) backgrounds are systematically deterred from Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields when teachers and scientists create ideologically colorblind STEM learning environments where cultural differences are deemed irrelevant and disregard how race/ethnicity shapes students' experiences. We examine whether and how STEM faculty can serve as important sources of information that signal racial/ethnic diversity inclusion (or exclusion) that influence RMM students' motivation to persist in STEM. Specifically, we focus on RMM students' perceptions of their faculty research mentors' cultural awareness--the extent to which students believe that their faculty research mentor acknowledges and appreciates racial/ethnic differences in STEM research. Results from a longitudinal survey of RMM students (N = 150) participating in 74 faculty-led STEM research labs demonstrated that RMM students who perceived their faculty research mentor to be more culturally aware experienced more positive "social climates" in the lab and were more "identified as scientists." Increased science identity, in turn, predicted their motivation to pursue STEM careers 3 months later. These findings demonstrate the importance of acknowledging, welcoming, and celebrating racial/ethnic diversity within STEM learning environments to broaden inclusive and equitable participation in STEM.

Remote labs are a groundbreaking development in the education industry, providing students with access to laboratory education anytime, anywhere. However, most remote labs are costly and difficult to scale, especially in developing countries. With this as a motivation, this paper proposes a new remote labs (RLabs) solution that includes two use case experiments: Vanishing Rod and Focal Length. The hardware experiments are built at a low-cost by retrofitting Internet of Things (IoT) components. They are also made portable by designing miniaturised and modular setups. The software architecture designed as part of the solution seamlessly supports the scalability of the experiments, offering compatibility with a wide range of hardware devices and IoT platforms. Additionally, it can live-stream remote experiments without needing dedicated server space for the stream. The software architecture also includes an automation suite that periodically checks the status of the experiments using computer vision (CV). The software architecture is further assessed for its latency and performance. RLabs is qualitatively evaluated against seven non-functional attributes - affordability, portability, scalability, compatibility, maintainability, usability, and universality. Finally, user feedback was collected from a group of students, and the scores indicate a positive response to the students’ learning and the platform’s usability.

The living lab (LL) concept has a significant potential to drive sustainable development, particularly in the bioeconomy sector, by assisting communities in improving their quality of life whilst also considering the environmental impact. In this context, the main research question was the following: is there any specific mechanism through which living labs operate under the sustainable development concept? We reviewed 120 papers addressing this topic and performed a bibliometric analysis on the linkage between sustainability and living labs by applying the methodology of a systematic review. We concluded that living labs can drive innovation and experimentation in sustainability, which can be transposed into tangible solutions to economic, environmental, and social problems. The role of living labs in the transition to a bioeconomy is discussed and further research directions are presented.

Out-of-class activities play a crucial role in student learning. However, student opinions on the design of these activities are rarely measured across several different classes. The purpose of this study is to understand students' preferences and attitudes towards new "Engaged Mathematics Labs" in which professors and teaching assistants assisted students in completing an assignment during lab time. We analyze both qualitative and quantitative survey responses from [approximately]200 first year students participating in "Engaged Mathematics Labs" across two different levels of mathematics classes at a large Canadian public university. Results indicate that students enjoy being able to work in groups regardless of major or gender. Moreover, students learned to effectively use resources available in the course to solve questions that deepen their understanding of course concepts. Understanding the student preferences from this study can help form the design of future learning activities and future pedagogical studies.

Using undergraduate students in the research methods course in Child Development as participants and keeping the instructional approach consistent, this study examined two research questions. The first research question tested the effect of two classroom settings, active learning classrooms (ALCs) versus computer labs, on students' learning. The results found that students in ALCs performed marginally better than computer labs for overall course grades and papers, but not for exams. The second research question tested the relationship between the reduction of negative feeling state and learning and investigated whether the relationship differed based on the classroom setting (ALCs vs computer lab). There were differential relationships between the reduction of negative feeling state and the performance of specific assignments by classroom settings. This study highlights the complexity of the impact classroom settings might have on students' learning and how it might be related to students' emotional states and their learning.

The European Commission has identified the role of Living Labs and Citizen Science as needed tools for the process of citizen-centric knowledge valorisation. Backed by the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) and the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) signed in 2023, this workshop seeked to bridge these two worlds for mutual benefit and increased societal impact. During the workshop, we (1) introduced the features of Living Labs; (2) co-created practical examples on how Citizen Science and Living Labs can provide joint contributions in support of green, social and digital transitions; and (3) started to identify action items where the ECSA and ENoLL communities join forces to empower citizens to become true change makers. Although providing important first insights, the workshop revealed a need to develop a better understanding of the relationships and possible mutual benefits between Citizen Science and Living Labs. Next steps include a follow up mirror workshop at Open Living Lab Days conference 2024.

[This paper is part of the "Focused Collection on Instructional Labs: Improving Traditions and New Directions."] Recent studies provide evidence that social constructivist pedagogical methods such as active learning, interactive engagement, and inquiry-based learning, while pedagogically more effective, can enable inequities in the classroom. By conducting a quantitative empirical examination of gender-inequitable group dynamics in two inquiry-based physics labs, we extend results of previous work. Using a survey on group work preferences and video recordings of lab sessions, we find similar patterns of gendered role taking noted in prior studies. These results are not reducible to differences in students' preferences. We find that an intervention which employed partner agreement forms, with the goal of reducing inequities, had a positive impact on students' engagement with equipment during a first-semester lab course. Our work will inform implementation of more effective interventions in the future and emphasizes challenges faced by instructors who are dedicated to both research-based pedagogical practices and efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in their classrooms.

Policy analysts dedicate a great deal of their time performing routine tasks including collecting information, identifying policy issues and options, and appraising policy options. The amount of information available online has become increasingly overwhelming. This “experience” paper examines how readily available AI tools can assist policy workers and researchers. To do so, we examine environmental policy innovation lab (EPIL) websites using three widely used generative AI programs (ChatGPT, Claude AI, and Perplexity) to assess how well they collect information about PILs and how they utilize the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To do so, five questions are asked, including defining a PIL, whether the PILs in our database are indeed policy labs and the extent to which PILs explicitly or implicitly contribute to and/or address SDGs. Our results suggest that rapidly emerging AI tools can significantly supplement routine policy analysis and improve the routine tasks associated with analytical policy capacity. However, we conclude that despite the rapid developments, augmented intelligence is not a substitute for human analysis but rather a complementary tool.

Occupational therapy (OT) educators strive to design learning experiences to enhance OT students' clinical reasoning and promote preparedness for the complexities of clinical practice. Occupational therapy programs have collaborated with the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Association and taken a novel approach to the development of interprofessional experiential learning through student-led ALS Caregiver Learning Labs (CLLs). A retrospective pre-test post-test study was completed to identify outcomes related to participation in three different ALS CLLs embedded into a master's level OT curriculum. A 6-point rating scale questionnaire was used to assess students' perception of their clinical reasoning, clinical skills, and comfort level. Improvement was noted in the level of comfort when interacting with caregivers and students' perceptions of their clinical skills and clinical reasoning improved across all questions. In addition, students completed a case study assignment to examine clinical reasoning performance. On average, post-lab scores were higher than pre-lab scores for each question, and the differences were statistically significant with the level of significance at p < 0.05. Results suggest that a CLL experience is an effective learning method to increase students' comfort level interacting with caregivers, enhance students' perception of clinical reasoning ability, and improve clinical reasoning skills. Occupational therapy students benefited from the experience at different levels of progression, delivery methods, and opportunities for interprofessional interaction. Occupational therapy programs at other institutions may benefit from embedding a CLL into the curriculum to meet the needs of the community while improving students' clinical reasoning and enhancing the ability to provide client-centered care.

Physical and virtual labs have unique capabilities that can influence how students learn from them. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of physical and virtual manipulatives on students' learning of heat and temperature and to examine the influence of various combinations of physical and virtual manipulatives. A total of 205 participants were divided into four groups: only physical manipulatives, only virtual manipulatives, physical-virtual manipulatives, and virtual-physical manipulatives. Students' knowledge acquisition was tested using Pretest--Post-test design. The results showed that physical and virtual manipulatives are as effective in facilitating students' learning of state changes, but virtual manipulatives are more beneficial to students' learning of thermal expansion and contraction than physical manipulatives are. Physical-virtual manipulatives are more effective than virtual-physical manipulatives or physical manipulatives alone are to promote students' learning of heat and temperature, but this effect is similar to that of virtual manipulatives alone. The results suggest that virtual laboratories can effectively model abstract concepts. The better effect of the physical-virtual operation sequence on learning does not depend on whether the two types of experiments are combined or on the sequence of operations but on the type of experiment when its advantages actually contribute to learning.

Campus-community partnerships are well-positioned to play a role in advancing social and environmental justice in the context of our rapidly changing and increasingly inequitable world. Across the Global North, post-secondary institutions, civil society organizations, and communities are partnering to establish living labs by integrating research, teaching, and community engagement to advance regenerative social-ecological systems. Living labs aim to co-create innovative solutions to complex challenges through interdisciplinary, placed-based experiential learning and community-engaged action in the built and natural environments. In this paper, we focus on the potential for living labs to establish connections between people and communities and increasing the impact of place-based activities focused on social and environmental justice and sustainability, also known as just sustainabilities. We reflect on our collective experiences working with the Lake Superior Living Labs Network (LSLLN), a nested network of living labs collaborating across the Lake Superior watershed. The LSLLN was established in 2018 as a platform to connect academics and community groups across Canada, the United States, and multiple Indigenous territories, with the goal of developing and expanding partnerships and place-based collaborative initiatives grounded in the Lake Superior watershed as a social-ecological system. Drawing on these insights, we consider the possibilities for a watershed-based approach to living labs. We conclude with a discussion that suggests that nested and networked living labs have the potential to enhance relationships and increase the impact of place-based social justice and sustainability-related activities, while pointing to several limitations of working within existing institutional structures.

This research explores the conceptual integration of Living Labs (LLs) into the Regional Innovation Ecosystem (RIE) to understand their potential as facilitators of Responsible Innovation. While previous studies explored the role of Living Labs, they lack comprehensive integration strategies for addressing wicked problems. A conceptual framework is developed to understand the main role, detailed functions, and key elements for integration. Seven expert interviews were conducted to develop the conceptual framework, using the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (imec) within the Flemish Innovation Ecosystem as empirical context. The findings emphasise Living Labs as central orchestrators, enabling user-centric innovation, real-world experimentation, and stakeholder engagement. We identify four key elements that facilitate the proposed integration: government policy and funding, strategic integration, formal collaborations, and proof of concept. These findings have implications for advancing the theoretical understanding of Living Labs' integration into the Regional Innovation Ecosystem, and for practitioners who aim to foster Responsible Innovation.

The Horizon 2020 project EU 1.5°C Lifestyles aims to mainstream lifestyles aligned with the aspirational target of the Paris Agreement. The project analyzes lifestyle perspectives at the household level and links them to studies of relevant political and socio-economic structures at various levels of government. Within this project, Citizen Thinking Labs were organized in five EU countries to explore the acceptance of and motivations and barriers to changes that could lead to lifestyles compatible with the 1.5°C target. Through a unique mixed-methods approach, including an exploratory board game (the Climate Puzzle), this research generated insights into citizen acceptance by exploring motivations and barriers associated with the acceptance of key lifestyle changes toward 1.5°C. The results confirm previous research in that citizens are more accepting of lower-impact lifestyle options requiring financial investment (e.g., changing lighting and using efficient devices) than higher-impact options that require more substantial behavior changes. Citizens were also motivated by perceived co-benefits for example, concerning health. The research developed insight into the conditions underlying the acceptance of the least preferred options that included plant-based eating and smaller housing. The results also indicated that citizens’ acceptance could be shaped by discussing options with other citizens. Thus, we note the important role citizens may play in devising solutions for overcoming barriers to the acceptance of less-preferred lifestyle options in various contexts. While this study focused on individuals, the findings also underscore the limitations of individual and household agency and the importance of modifying the socio-technical context that shapes behavioral patterns and environmental impacts.

This report, developed as part of the 2024 UCSF Industry Documents Library Undergraduate Summer Fellowship, examines four distinct projects that leverage natural language processing and data science within the context of the JUUL Labs Collection and the broader IDL. Project One investigates the optical character recognition (OCR) accuracy of low-quality and handwritten documents in the absence of ground truth data. Project Two explores the implementation of embedding search algorithms and visualizations aimed at enhancing the relevance of document recommendations for users. Project Three employs txt-ferret to conduct a thorough scan of a substantial corpus of industry documents to identify sensitive information, including credit card numbers. Finally, Project Four assesses the biases present in large language model (LLM) summarization through the lens of sentiment analysis.

Cookbook-style laboratories (labs), where students follow recipes and confirm known results are common, yet years of science teaching and learning research indicate they do not help college students develop the habits of mind and skills of a scientist. We describe the rationale, challenges, and initial changes made in our teaching and learning lab reform project in this article. The metaphor of cooking and following recipes aims to help readers visualize the fundamental changes we are making to college exercise physiology labs. Connections between changes to existing inquiry-based learning literature, four distinct levels of inquiry in science learning, student agency, and student reflection are made. Changes to teaching practices and supporting the instructional team in trying new strategies which support reformed lab learning activities is also described in this article. We invite readers to reflect on the changes we are making, and perhaps imagine ways they could translate our early reforms to their own college science lab teaching and learning context.

We report on a study of the effects of laboratory activities that model fictitious laws of physics in a virtual reality environment on (i) students' epistemology about the role of experimental physics in class and in the world; (ii) students' self-efficacy; and (iii) the quality of student engagement with the lab activities. We create opportunities for students to practice physics as a means of creating and validating new knowledge by simulating real and fictitious physics in virtual reality (VR). This approach seeks to steer students away from a confirmation mindset in labs by eliminating any form of prior or outside models to confirm. We refer to the activities using this approach as Novel Observations in Mixed Reality (NOMR) labs. We examined NOMR's effects in 100-level and 200-level undergraduate courses. Using pre-post measurements, we find that after NOMR labs, students in both populations were more expert-like in their epistemology about experimental physics and held stronger self-efficacy about their abilities to do the kinds of things experimental physicists do. Through the lens of the psychological theory of flow, we found that students engage as productively with NOMR labs as with traditional hands-on labs. This engagement persisted after the novelty of VR in the classroom wore off, suggesting that these effects were due to the pedagogical design rather than the medium of the intervention. We conclude that these NOMR labs offer an approach to physics laboratory instruction that centers the development of students' understanding of and comfort with the authentic practice of science.