Introduction
The Science Faculty at the Open University (OU), UK is re-writing the science foundation course, S102. This course was first developed in the early 1970s and has undergone two major revisions in the last twenty years. The course components include a box about the size of a tea chest containing materials and equipment which is sent to students in two parts early in the year. This box is called a Home Experiment Kit (HEK), and gives students an opportunity to carry out practical and experimental work related to the course. The kit aims to help students develop scientific skills and to reinforce and build on concepts and procedures introduced by other components of the course. The kit is also seen as an important source of motivation, to maintain student interest and enthusiasm for studying a science course.
Certain activities based on the use of the kit have computer-marked assessment (CMA) and the outcome of one activity is tutor marked. It is important, though not always essential, for students to complete these activities in order to pass the course.
The kit itself is bulky and many students have problems finding space to set up and carry out HEK practical and experimental work, especially during activities that take considerable time to complete. Safe storage, especially in homes where room is limited, causes major problems.
However, most students interviewed said they liked the kit:
I 'like placing test tubes in a rack, (etc.)... It makes me feel like I'm doing what a real scientist does... doing 'scientific work' using 'scientific equipment.'
HEK helps get across some of the more difficult concepts. This is especially useful for those students with no previous experience of science.'
'This idea of it's fun counts for a lot and I'm sure quite a lot of people do the course 'cos of the chemistry kit..'
Most students interviewed said that they completed some of the HEK activities; a few said they intend to complete all while others said they would only complete the Tutor Marked Assessment (TMA) activity and perhaps one or two others. One student said he never intends to use the kit at all! As two students put it:
'S102 is too busy ... there's too much in the course ... and not enough time to do all the experiments ... everything is too rushed.'
There is not 'the time to do experiments apart from the TMA one ... Most other experiments I considered were a luxury.'
The problem of inequitable access, that not all students received the kit, for example, the European Community students, was seen as another reason to radically rethink the HEK role and to carefully consider what could and should be included in a kit, if a HEK was supplied with the new course. As one University member of staff said:
'Can HEK really be effective when only a part of the kit can be sent to some students?'
Students from European Community countries, an increasing potential student catchment area for the University, cannot be supplied with the kit due to problems crossing international borders with chemicals, etc. These students attend Day Schools held in regional areas to observe and carry out practical and experimental work.
The kit itself is expensive. For example, the 1993 costs for the dispatch and return of the kit is estimated at £80,000; warehouse labour costs for handling and repacking is between £l50-£200,000; annual maintenance, cost of procurement of replacement items is approximately £50,000; repacking and replacing the outer carton each year costs £10,000. With a projected increase in science foundation student numbers in 1994, an estimated addition of £100,000 will be needed for new kits to be made. (The chemistry balance supplied in HEK costs approximately £100 each.) The original cost of the kit for 8,000 students in 1971 was £l million. A new or revised kit for S103 would undoubtedly be expensive to procure, supply and maintain (Dunford, 1993 and Blunt, 1993).
Based on an interpretation of the collected information, this study proposes a number of alternatives to the present HEK. These are described in the remainder of this paper.
A kit, preferably non-returnable, no larger than a shoe box
Students and tutors interviewed stated that there were certain exercises taught through the HEK that could not be done as successfully by other means. For example, HEK gives students opportunities to handle and appropriately use scientific apparatus. Certain skills in selecting and carrying out certain procedures using the correct equipment and materials supplied could not be done easily by other means.
However, could certain activities be completed successfully by requiring students to supply some of their own resources with the University supplying a minimum amount through a greatly reduced kit?
An OU, Walton Hall member of staff takes this view further:
'Early in the Foundation Course lots of simple practical work is needed, in part, to overcome 'fear' of science, to gain motivation and to evoke an understanding of the nature of science. In the first half of the new foundation course it would be good to see experiments that stressed the learning of scientific techniques and experiments with starting points from the students experience; something students can understand and relate to, for example how shower get is made thicker. In this way the HEK supplied to students in the initial year could be a 'throwaway' non-returnable kit, with much of the initial equipment and substances supplied by the student.'
It should also be noted however that if students are not given a kit and are expected to find or purchase too much material, they may be less likely to do the work or activity.
Instructional video to replace certain types of activities represented in the existing HEK
There are some activities in the present HEK that require students to observe, record, then write up their findings. The goal in these activities is in seeing and reporting rather than doing. Since most students have access to a TV and video recorder, seeing and reporting activities may well be suited to video and text type materials with focus questions and activities for students to do before, during and after watching the video. A students agrees:
'Personally, I'd have no regrets through the loss of the science equipment. I think there are other ways you could do it. For example, having Science days on a Saturday ... Or maybe a video where you could maybe see someone do the experiments and you could see them make all the arrangements on the video and you just take notes of what you've observed'
These instructional videos could be produced in short clips of 2-5 minutes and interrelated with text activities, etc. Tutors may well find it easier to assess student understanding and abilities, as the phenomena recorded on video would be standard and unchanged.
A disadvantage, of course, would be precisely that the phenomena would be standard and unchanged. In conducting experiments and in doing practicals in science an important element is that of uncertainty; that theories when tested inpractice do not always reveal the 'right' results; results that come close to those generated by the theory (Waring, 1979).
The video demonstration has therefore a limited use, though it may successfully replace
some seeing and reporting type HEK activities.
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