{"id":8723,"date":"2020-12-07T13:10:16","date_gmt":"2020-12-07T21:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/?p=8723"},"modified":"2025-08-18T12:58:58","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T19:58:58","slug":"the-increasingly-possible-online-labs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/2020\/12\/the-increasingly-possible-online-labs\/","title":{"rendered":"The increasingly possible: online labs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever since I discovered the back pages<\/a> in H. G. Wells’s Text-book of Biology<\/em>, (1893),\u00a0 I’ve known a bit about scientific work being done at home. Doing “practical work” at home was important for correspondence education at the end of the 19th century, so that students could study for examinations even if they didn’t have access to a laboratory.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When online teaching started at our college, back in 1998, and began to grow, a number of science instructors were concerned. You could do a lecture online, fine, but you couldn’t do a lab. Simulations weren’t enough, they said. You need real materials. Wells’s students, of course, had real materials. They ordered them by mail or, in the case of frogs, went and caught them.<\/p>\n

So here we are in 2020, with online labs foisted onto unsuspecting faculty, and they’ve done brilliantly. I attended this session, where four professors, from auto shop to biotechnology, showed how they do labs online. For inspiration alone it’s worth the 50+ minutes.<\/p>\n