Forum Higher Ed & Training Forum: Re: Re: Re: Using LAMS in Science

By: Bronwen Dalziel

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Thanks for your feedback Peter.

How big is a prac group normally? We would run a prac of around 120 students, but there would be around 20-25 students per demonstrator.

Pracs would typically have a 1 hour tutorial followed by 4 hours experimental work. There are 2 banks of about 15 computers for processing results. I know this set up was considered expensive by the department and the number of pracs has recently been halved.

Transferring the cost of the tutorials (at around $70/25 demonstrators/week) over to a LAMS format would already be saving a lot of money. Not that the demonstraotrs (PhD students) would be too thrilled.

I will try to work up a real prac soon to show how I think LAMS can be used.

I will also talk to Robyn about setting up a survey for this topic.

Thanks again.

Posted by Bronwen Dalziel

By: Peter Miller

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Q. How big is a prac group normally? We would run a prac of around 120 students, but there would be around 20-25 students per demonstrator.

A. Similar size: 110-160, 3 staff + 5 demonstrators, runs twice in 6-week slots, full-day each Thursday! I'm not claiming this is typical.

Not sure that I want to replace wet labs entirely for obvious reasons. Using LAMS to get students involved in experimental design is one objective I have but didn't realise this year.

Generically we also use computers on the course for data collation, image processing and simulation (slime mould signalling with the Laub-Loomis model). The latter would be a good target too.

Posted by Peter Miller