Changing Lab Education from “cookbook approach” to student-centered experiment design

by Katrin Wolf, ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

When you enter the practical laboratory course in food chemistry at ETH Zurich this spring semester, you will find a calm, focused atmosphere. Students are conducting their experiments mostly independently, confidently finding their way around equipment and necessary steps in the process. It has not always been this way.

For many years, the food chemistry class, like many other practical courses around the world, followed a cookbook-style approach to laboratory education. Students were given step-by-step protocols to follow, much like a recipe in the kitchen. They often arrived in the lab unprepared, asking low-level questions, relying on instructors for guidance to the next step, and struggling to engage with the experiments.

While the intention of this approach is to structure the work in the laboratory classroom and to support the students during experiments to enable independent work, it often had the opposite effect. Over time, protocols tend to expand into extensive documents, aiming to cover every detail and possible question. Consequently, the cognitive load during the experiments is often too high for the students. With little to no preparation before the class, they struggled to understand the processes, manage new equipment and grasp complex equations, all at the same time. This situation can lead students to adopt a more passive and superficial learning approach, as they lack clear responsibility for their learning process. As a result, students often don’t engage in the learning process and lab assistants spend their time guiding them through individual steps. This approach is neither effective nor scalable to increasing student numbers.

In response to these challenges, a transformative approach was introduced to the class as a pilot in the spring semester of 2023. Instead of providing students with ready-made protocols for the experiments, the course shifted to a student-centered model that required the students to design their own protocols for the experiments before entering the laboratory classroom.

A shift in the learning experience: From passive execution to active experimentation

To support this transition, the teaching team introduced “LabBuddy”, an interactive e-learning tool. The tool provides scaffolding in flexible degrees, guidance and immediate feedback to the students, empowering them to come to the lab class, fully prepared, running the experiments with very little support.  The new design brought an immediate change in student engagement. Instead of passively executing predefined steps, students had to prepare their experiments in advance.

Although there was some initial resistance from the students to the time investment for the preparation tasks, the active engagement in the experiment design led to a deeper understanding of the single steps in the experiment and the overall concepts.

“In the lab reports, it was noticeable that the students had studied the topic in depth.”
(Lab Assistant quote)

The lab assistants were impressed by the focused and thorough work and the new learning culture in the classroom. Previously, much of the time in class was spent addressing basic, procedural questions—such as where to find equipment or how to execute specific steps.
With students now arriving well-prepared, class time could be used more effectively for higher-level discussions and problem-solving.

The students also reported a significant improvement in their learning experience.
One participant reflected:

“LabBuddy gave me the opportunity to think about why I was doing it at each step and I did not just get a ready-made protocol to work with”.

The role of LabBuddy in supporting active learning

LabBuddy, initially a spin-off at the Laboratory of Food Chemistry at Wageningen University, has now become a widely adopted e-learning solution across various European universities.
The tool enables active learning and focused work in the laboratory, helps to reduce cognitive load, and empowers students to formulate their own experimental designs before they enter the lab. Departing from the cookbook-style, this approach nurtures preparedness, critical thinking, and a deeper understanding of the rationale behind each experiment.
Instructors can identify difficulties through the tool and support students on an individual level, using the time freed up by eliminating low-level questions.
Students build confidence through constructive feedback, marking a significant shift towards student-centered, active learning.

The shift from a cookbook-style approach to student-centered, active learning has brought significant improvements to the laboratory education in food chemistry at ETH Zurich.
By empowering students and providing them with the necessary tools and support, a more engaging and effective learning environment has been established.
This successful project was showcased in the Learning and Teaching Fair 2024 at ETH Zurich and other educators have started to implement the approach into their laboratory class environment, starting a small but growing community within ETH Zurich.

Further reading