THE ROLE OF LABORATORY-BASED PRACTICAL EXERCISES IN THE THEORETICAL CONCEPTS LEARNING

• Autor(a) principal: Rossi, B. C.
• Data de Publicação: 2007
• Outros Autores: GalembecK, E.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Ensino de Bioquímica
• Texto Completo: http://bioquimica.org.br/revista/ojs/index.php/REB/article/view/101
• topic: theoretical concepts; role of laboratory

Besides to equip the students to perform, analyze and interpret laboratoryinvestigations and to demonstrate familiarity with handling and using laboratoryinstrumentation, the laboratory-based practical exercises expect to integratetheoretical concepts and practical skills. This work is a preliminary study toinvestigate the relationship between the concepts learned in the lectures and theconcepts applied in the lab classes. Firstly we compared the students gradesobtained in the exams with their grades in the laboratory exercises reports. Itshows a non-significance correlation (Spearman) between the exams and reportsgrades. In a second moment we compared the students grades obtained in a preselectedexam question with the grades obtained in the related laboratory exercisereport. In this case, we could observe a significant correlation between the examsand the reports grades. This preliminary study held with 82 biology studentssuggests that the top scored students in the exams are not necessary the sametop scored students in the laboratory exercises reports, but the students who havethe higher scores in the laboratory exercises reports have also the higher scores inthe questions related to the laboratory exercise asked in the exam. These resultssuggest that the laboratory classes have an important role in the theoreticalconcepts learning.