Hands-on wet laboratory experiences are crucial to the learning process in the STEM field, but wet-lab tools are expensive, and so it is often impossible to provide each student with an individual learning lab kit. Also, due to the limitation of instructor/teaching assistant to student ratio, students cannot always obtain feedback of their performance in terms of lab procedures or correct manipulation of lab tools.
Hence, to improve students’ active decision making and hands-on tactile skill in wet lab, we developed a prototype of an “electronized” micropipette which can interact with our custom video games to provide an objective feedback to students’ performance, which is not possible with an actual micropipette.
As an extension of this previously funded IITG project, our current project aims to (i) further optimizes our custom hands-on “electronized” lab tools devices for ease of assembly and cost per unit, and (ii) creates a Lab Simulation Builder (LSB) that will allow instructors, without any computer programming requirement, to make their own lab games based on their individual teaching need. This will allow instructors and students to more fully utilize our “electronized” lab tools, expanding the hands-on lab learning experience of students by allowing them to practice their tactile skill in an entertaining and a less stressful environment even outside of the lab.