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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.

Background: The adoption of virtual laboratories (VLs) has experienced a significant surge, catalysed by the global changes in the educational landscape, notably influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally supplementary to traditional in-person laboratory experiments, VLs swiftly transitioned into a primary source of hands-on laboratory activities for educational institutions worldwide during the pandemic. As restrictions have eased, virtual, computer-assisted learning platforms continue to be used, though now as a complement to, rather than a substitute for, hands-on experimentation opportunities. However, their adoption presents both opportunities and challenges that require thorough investigation to maximize their effectiveness and equity. Objectives: This paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of VL resources utilized across various scientific disciplines. It evaluates their potential to enhance traditional hands-on laboratory activities and examines the efficacy of computer-assisted learning platforms from a constructivist learning perspective. By doing so, the study seeks to identify best practices, challenges, and strategies for the effective integration of VLs in science education. Methods: A content analysis was conducted on literature published from 2013 to 2023, focusing on VLs in educational settings. Thematic analysis was employed to categorize the findings into three primary pillars: Merits, Challenges, and Implementation Strategies. Multiple researchers participated in the analysis to ensure reliability and consistency. To further enhance reliability, regular cross-checks and consensus meetings were held to resolve any discrepancies and maintain the integrity of the thematic categorization. A constructivist learning perspective was used to analyse the instructional implications, focusing on active learning to evaluate alignment with educational goals, adapted teaching methods, and assessments. Results and Conclusions: The analysis revealed that VLs offer significant benefits, including enhanced accessibility, flexibility, and opportunities for active learning. Virtual labs provide scalable, safe opportunities for inquiry-based science learning by replicating experiments in an accessible digital environment, enhancing understanding of scientific concepts based on research demonstrations of improved learning outcomes. However, challenges such as high initial setup costs, technological barriers, and the need for effective integration with traditional curricula were also identified. Despite these challenges, VLs have the potential to complement and enhance hands-on laboratory experiences, provided they are implemented thoughtfully and equitably. Future research should focus on improving the efficacy, accessibility, collaboration among stakeholders, and economic feasibility of VLs to maximize their educational impact.

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.

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence that a novel, industry-situated, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Learning Laboratory (STEM Lab) experience may have on students' (ages 10-18) perceptions of manufacturing-related careers as well as to identify any challenges/strategies for the implementation of these informal learning spaces within manufacturing facilities. STEM labs, which are similar to makerspaces, can be defined as physical spaces where students can learn integrated skills and content through hands-on experiences (Roy and Love, 2017). While STEM labs can be found in a variety of settings (e.g., school libraries, museums, or even theme parks), the industry-situated STEM lab that is the focus of this study is a unique application of such a learning environment in an informal space within a manufacturing facility. However, the aim for this specific space is to offer local students an opportunity to see manufacturing, the people that work there, and the skills that might be necessary to pursue a future career in the various aspects of this industry. This type of career awareness and preparation initiative has become an area of interest for manufacturers as they continue to face increasing challenges with attracting employees and confronting negative, potentially outdated, perceptions of manufacturing-related careers. That being said, this research will not attempt to justify the STEM lab initiative, but will instead provide a critical view of this novel context and this type of informal learning environment. This research objective was pursued by interviewing key industry stakeholders and analyzing an existing dataset-consisting of both student surveys and drawing tests-collected by the host manufacturer over the first year of the lab's operation. By triangulating the data gathered from stakeholder interviews and both student surveys and drawing tests, which were collected before and after their experience with the STEM lab at the manufacturing facilities, this research sheds light on the challenges that similar industry-situated learning environments might face, as well as provides opportunities to potentially enhance the experience from both the student and industry perspective.

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.

University-based boundary organisations provide academics with an environment where they can interact with a wide variety of societal partners to produce knowledge and work on research projects, often of a transdisciplinary nature. This environment, however, implies that their researchers may be confronted with multiple and sometimes conflicting demands coming from various stakeholders. In this study, we focus on one such case, a Real-world Laboratory (RwL), set up by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. This RwL focuses on urban sustainable development challenges. Drawing on boundary work literature, we analyse the boundary work strategies employed by the lab's leading researchers to manage such demands as part of a RwL research project. We observe that the managing researchers buffer several types of boundaries in order not to compromise the transdisciplinary nature of the RwL. They appear to utilise four types of boundary devices when managing boundaries: language, people, objects, and spaces. We conclude that, to reduce tensions, the managing researchers should acknowledge the presence of boundaries early on in their RwL research project, that is, during its conception phase.

This article details the outcome of a joint reflective approach undertaken by the authors to identify common difficulties experienced by 2nd-year undergraduate Biochemistry students in laboratory classes. Difficulties experienced in laboratories can affect the development of hand skills, an understanding of how to correctly operate laboratory equipment and the linkage between didactic content and their experimental demonstration. These difficulties covered were identified based on their common appearance across multiple cohorts and are grouped into five broad areas. The context of the laboratory exercises is detailed and the common difficulties experienced by students are outlined. The potential causes of these difficulties are then discussed along with the approaches and strategies that were implemented to help resolve future occurrences. The approach and resources developed to address these difficulties may help other Biochemistry educators who are facing similar experiences with their undergraduate students.

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.

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.

Library labs are dedicated spaces with highly trained library, IT, and research support staff. The staff are on hand to help teach faculty and advanced graduate students new and emerging methodologies and technologies. Such a lab is a place to engage in new ways of, for example, doing digital scholarship or putting Open Science into practice. This article looks at ways that researchers engage with library labs and proposes a lab engagement pyramid to distinguish models for deploying trained staff and resources within the library lab space. A lab in an academic library requires the right mindset, skill set, tool set, programs, and staffing. The authors posit that a lab will be most successful if the library identifies the conditions that are desirable for the proposed lab space before it is designed and built. When a lab is already in existence but is underutilized, changing engagement strategies can lead to new growth.

Outreach science labs aim to promote students' interest. Previous research has often suggested that performing experiments in such labs has a positive effect on their interest. However, these studies often lack a comparison to the effects of performing them at school. This research gap was addressed in the present study. The sample consisted of 402 upper-secondary level students (age: M = 16.53 years, SD = 0.80 years) who performed three experiments on the topic of enzymology either in an outreach science lab (n = 203) or at school (n = 199). Contrary to the assumption, experimentation at the outreach science lab did not outperform experimentation at school in terms of students' psychological state of interest in the comparison to the school setting. Surprisingly, differences in the value-related component of the psychological state of interest were even found in favor of the school treatment.

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.