Efficient Lab Activities are About Demonstration, Not Discovery

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If you want a lab activity to run well, support learning, and not turn into a giant train wreck of chaos/confusion, then it needs to demonstrate something that students have already learned, NOT expect them to discover completely new knowledge.

There’s a million things that can go wrong during a lab and the only way students are going to get through successfully is if they have a solid understanding of what’s supposed to be happening each step of the way.

The people who actually succeed in discovering new knowledge – a.k.a, professional research scientists – are experts in their domain and even they have to spend tons of time in lab just to get experiments running as intended. Yes, they discover new knowledge through labwork but that’s because they are literally at the edge of their field and there is no other way to acquire knowledge.

Students are not even remotely in the same situation. They have comparatively little knowledge, and little time, and they are expected to acquire decades or even centuries of knowledge over the course of a year. So it’s important that they acquire that knowledge efficiently.

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