Birgit Dreier, Department of Biochemistry

One of the major challenges in teaching is how to motivate students and ensure that they will have a positive learning outcome. How can this be achieved in a practical laboratory setting? Students are in principle eager when it comes to ‘play time’ and not just sitting over books or listening to lectures. However, without the basic knowledge and skills they will have no chance on the job market. In the setting of my biochemistry laboratory class students failed to prepare themselves in previous years and they felt no motivation to do so, because there was no assessment or grading. Therefore, ‘play time’ was cut short, because basic knowledge had to be discussed  in detail before the actual execution of the experimental parts. In order to stimulate their motivation, the course format was changed to a ‘Flipped Classroom’ model with two days out  of class for preparations and assessment implemented by a quiz, short presentation and grading. In order to evaluate the effectiveness regarding motivation and learning outcome, student’s expectations before class and experiences after class were assessed. In addition, student’s opinions from previous years and peer observations in class were collected.In summary, success in student’s motivation and partly in improvement of learning outcomes  was observed, but other aspects might need to be considered in the future (e.g. time, implementation of instructive movies, improvement of the script, curriculum setup and ways for better guidance).