Founded in 1977, San Joaquin Valley College (SJVC) is a private for-profit college with locations in California and an online division, offering certificates, associate of science degrees, and continuing education opportunities in the medical, dental, veterinary, criminal justice, and industrial trade fields.
Ms. Carlota ‘Tibi’ Marin teaches chemistry, organic & biochemistry, and microbiology on-campus as well as blended and hybrid courses at San Joaquin Valley College. With nearly 30 students per section, she teaches prerequisite courses for nursing and dental hygiene programs with the goals of engaging students more deeply in their learning and ensuring they develop the essential knowledge and skills needed for advanced coursework. To achieve those goals, Professor Marin turned to Science Interactive to help her save time on lab prep, better prepare students for hands-on lab work, and ensure students stay engaged both inside and outside the classroom.
Increasing Student Confidence & Building Skills in On-Campus & Hybrid Labs
With much of her time devoted to balancing courses, figuring out how to adapt them for on-campus or hybrid environments, sourcing materials, prepping for labs, and tracking inventory, Professor Marin often found herself with less time than ever to focus on instruction and feedback.
She also wanted to build student confidence outside of the lab and better prepare them for the on-campus hands-on lab components of her courses, maximizing her in-person teaching time. She partnered with Science Interactive to:
- Minimize lab prep work and provide consistent lab experiences across on-campus and hybrid courses, without cutting corners on quality or rigor.
- Ensure immersive, interactive learning experiences inside and outside of the physical lab that reinforce lecture concepts and directly align to hands-on labs so students can more clearly understand how course material applies in a real-world situation.
- Foster a learning environment that better prepares and more deeply engages students in collaborative learning opportunities that build problem-solving and critical-thinking skills.
The Benefits
Simplified Lab Preparation = More Time for Hands-on Learning
Using pre-packaged hands-on kits in her on-campus and hybrid chemistry and microbiology lab courses has drastically reduced the amount of time Professor Marin spends on sourcing and preparing for labs. This both freed up teaching time and ensured each student used consistent materials.
“The lab kits have 95% of what we need; the other 5% is student- or faculty- supplied. For example, I make sure I have extra supplies needed for the lab, such as alcohol, bleach, and distilled water but most everything is in the ready-made kit for each student. AND YES! The kits are amazing, engaging, and most of all they provide a higher level of scientific exploration which in turn makes my students love science, and want to explore the unknown!
As a result, Professor Marin could optimize her F2F lab time with students, engaging in deeper analysis and collaborative activities.
More Confident and Prepared Students
The work starts well before students enter the lab. Before beginning a lab, students are required to complete a pre-lab, which includes a virtual simulation of the lab. With lab techniques, equipment, materials and standard safety protocols covered during this exercise, the pre-lab exploration component reduces the amount of F2F time Professor Tibi uses to address these topics. The virtual pre-lab also helps students build confidence in their skills and feel more prepared to apply their learning once they step foot in the lab.
Just as important, Professor Marin purposefully maps the virtual and hands-on labs to lecture topics each week to ensure students can connect classroom content to what they are learning during labs and to what they may encounter in the real world.
“I review the lecture content and try to match it with the pre-lab activities and hands-on labs so they go parallel to each other, working to reinforce the lecture content material. Every lab is designed to give students an outstanding, interactive learning experience, so I have to spend less time building this from scratch,” says Tibi.
As one of Professor Marin’s students shared, “I love these labs. They are very accessible and informative. I felt as though these experiments helped me better understand the concepts being taught in class. They’re very engaging.”
Stronger Class Community through Engagement & Interaction
Professor Marin designs her courses in ways that give her students an opportunity to connect, collaborate, and build a sense of community among one another. She sets up her classroom for interaction, pairing up students to work together one-on-one or in teams. While students are still expected to conduct their own experiments and upload those results to Science Interactive’s lab management platform, students are encouraged to work with one another, ask each other questions, and observe each other’s results.
“Each student will observe differently. We share results in microbiology and in chemistry; sometimes students move around the room and check out each other’s slides or see how the same contents and steps might have yielded different results. That is really the beauty of integrated observations,” says Professor Marin.
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Tibi’s Tactics for Keeping Students Engaged Professor Marin believes that connecting with students on the first day of class and empowering them to do their best is what makes students successful in her courses. She designs her courses in ways that help students develop critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, and leadership skills. Strategies for Increasing Engagement Inside the Classroom
Strategies for Increasing Engagement Outside the Classroom
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In the end, using hands-on kits aligned with high-quality curriculum, coupled with virtual pre-labs, in her on-campus and hybrid lab courses, Professor Marin makes sure students get real-world experiences and the opportunity to apply what they’ve learned in lecture. Partnering with Science Interactive for her on-campus and hybrid lab courses:
- Gives students additional ownership over their lab experience
- Ensures consistency of materials among all students, sections, and course modalities
- Maintains a balance between cost and quality of the experience
- Minimizes time-intensive set up, prep, and clean up so she can focus on instruction
“Everyone learns differently and at a different pace, which is why I work to modify my courses. I want to reach everyone. I go in different directions for them to learn and empower them to look beyond the classroom with science articles, videos, and their own life experiences. And when you see a student’s face as they engage in a different level of learning, with hands-on labs and demonstrations, you, as a teacher, know you’re doing a good job!”
-Professor Tibi Marin, San Joaquin Valley College
Tibi’s Tips! Click here for more tips on how she delivers effective labs and student-centered learning experiences.