Laboratories are a very important part of first year physics. Physics is an experimental science, the laboratories show students that what they are learning about in lectures applies in the real world, they also give them the skills in analyzing data and calculating uncertainties. I have designed our lab exercises to develop these skills but also to reinforce the areas of the course that students tend to struggle with: breaking vectors into components on an inclined plane; calculating moments of inertia and; and plotting PV graphs. Seeing them in the lab not only helps the students develop their skills at performing these calculations but also gives them a physical intuition about what these things mean.

Laboratories are the most expensive part of the course to run, we have at most 18 students per staff member. It is very important that they are designed to run as effectively and efficiently as possible. I have made the choice that the prework is completed and marked online before students come to class while the marking of the lab exercises themselves is completed within class during the lab sessions. This means that there is no need to pay demonstrators for marking outside of class, the budget is limited and I prefer to pay them for time spent with students. Students complete one lab a week, I have not introduced any post work in order to keep the load on students managable.

In 2011 I trialled the use of online prelab quizzes, at that stage utilising the university's LMS Blackboard. In the second half of 2011 I conducted extensive testing of other methods for delivering online quizzes. This included using the then new Moodle 2.0 platform (Moodle was being pilotted for UNSW at this time), Maple TA, and the adaptive e-learning platform (the precursor to smart sparrow). Following this testing, each option was assessed using student feedback (collected from surveys) as well as broader considerations on the ease of creating, maintaining, and using the quizzes. 189 of 209 students said the Moodle prelab quizzes were useful for preparing for their lab session. The outcome of this process was the adoption of Moodle-based quizzes across all the Physics 1A and 1B courses from 2012.

The implementation of these online quizzes formed the basis for several seminars and talks that I have given to the broader university community, including at the Science Learning and teaching workshop at the end of 2011, a Connections seminar in March 2012, and at the learning and teaching forum in May 2013. I have also presented on the use of Moodle quiz tool at the national Moodle conference, Moodlemoot, in 2014 along with A. Prof. Julain Cox and Russel Waldron. 

In addition to the prework quiz, I have substantially improved the online resources provided to students to prepare them for each week's laboratory exercise. For each experiment, students now have access to a video, introducing them to relevant theory and showing them how to use the equipment. These were filmed within our first year lab (to convey a sense of place to students) and cover the theory needed for the experiment as well as how to set up the equipment.

In order to make the labs run more efficiently have also introduced an online safety induction, digital mark entry by demonstrators, and a new sign-in system for demonstrators. These were developed with David Jonas and Kristien Clayton the IT team in physics. The introduction of this system removed the need for a lab technician to manually enter marks from pieces of paper into a database, while increasing accuracy and being more transparent to students. Students can now check their lab marks on Moodle soon after completing the lab. The demonstrator sign-in system is digital and location locked, demonstrators can only sign in once they arrive at the lab. This has decreased the number of instances demonstrators show up late and has streamlined the payment system.

The time savings gained from these innovations have allowed me the scope to better align the laboratory exercises with the lecture material.  This has in part been done with the introduction of five new experiments. These experiments focus on the concepts that the students find hardest to grasp. Giving students the opportunity to grapple with these difficult concepts in a supportive environment has improved their understanding. These new experiments were thoroughly evaluated using student feedback and monitoring of student performance. The students in general find these new laboratories challenging but very helpful.
 “Labatories- 50/50. The labs were 50% stress, 50% error calculations lol. It may seem that the labs were a negative, but they forced you to collaborate, cooperate and come really prepared. Eg, for ideal gas law experiment& finding spring constant, I for once actually studied the lab manual before hand and wrote notes about them so I would not fall behind nor drag my partner down. This forced preparation may not have improved my liking of the labs, but has improved my skill as a student.” (CATEI, PHYS1131, semester 1, 2015)

To improve the consistency of marking in the laboratory and to foster the role of the lab as formative assessment, I have written a rubric for each laboratory exercise. This rubric makes it clear to the students what each of the ten marks in the laboratory is awarded for. This has eliminated complaints from students about the perceived unfairness of the marking.

I also selected lab demonstrators, designed and ran demonstrator training and managed lab scheduling until a lab director role was introduced in 2017. I introduced a more transparent selection process, applicants were given a test and interview before commencing. The test ensured that all demonstrators knew the physics needed, this had been an issue in the past. The interview gave me the chance to get to know the demonstrators and was also a good opportunity for them to practice their interview skills, for many this was their first job interview. The majority of the applicants are UNSW students. Some of my favourite exercises I introduced to the training transforming the safety induction into a "treasure hunt" where the demonstrators needed to photograph themselves with the safety equipment to ensure they could find it, and an exercise to ensure marking consistency in which demonstrators all marked the same three reports, voted on the marks in google forms and then we looked at how this compared to an "expert" marker. I also introduced fortnightly demonstrator in charge (DICH) meetings. In these meetings we discussed the pressure points in the upcoming labs and improvements that could be made to the exercises that had just been completed. This led to a healthy feedback cycle, with the labs being constantly improved. This also provided mentoring to the new DICHs, they leaned from the more experienced DICHs and knew who they could go to if they needed advice.

The lab program I have designed at UNSW, Sydney has now been adopted at UNSW, Canberra. Students there use the same lab manual, pre-lab quizzes and videos and have identical equipment.