Traditional vs. virtual laboratories in health sciences education

ABSTRACT

Historically, traditional laboratory experiments have been given a central and distinctive role in science education. However, virtual laboratories have received considerable attention over the past several years in different areas of knowledge. The main aim of this study is to analyse the impact of the use of both traditional and virtual laboratories in Basic Science Subjects (BSS) in Health Sciences university degrees. For this reason, we have described and analysed different variables such as level of satisfaction, increase in perceived motivation and increase in perceived academic performance. Throughout the academic course the pupils who took part in our study carried out laboratory experiments both traditionally and virtually in different BSS, and they completed a questionnaire to assess their satisfaction and the impact of both approaches at the end of the course. The results point to statistically significant differences in favour of traditional laboratories in all the studied variables, together with some differences between male and female students. In general, students showed more positive attitudes towards traditional experiments. These results emphasize the importance of carrying out hands-on experiments to boost student motivation and perceived performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Laboratory
• ict
• active learning
• virtual laboratories
• traditional laboratories

Acknowledgments

Authors thank the LNO Research Office of Laureate Education, Inc. and Universidad Europea de Madrid (2018) for financial support. Besides, we also thank Dr. Pau López Clavel (University of Valencia, , University Institute of Women Studies) for helpful and interesting discussion

Author’s contributions

All authors took part in this study, read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors confirm that there are no known conflicts of interest associated with this publication and there has been no significant financial support for this work that could have influenced its outcome.

6. Declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The present study was approved by the ethics committee of the university. All participants signed a written informed consent.

Consent for publication

Not aplicable.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The present research was supported by the LNO Research Office of Laureate Education, Inc. (Hybrid Teaching & Learning Research Grant, 2016, O1628) and an internal project from Universidad Europea de Madrid (2018/UEM49).