Winner: 2022 Team Prize for Excellence in Higher Education
浪花直播 Lab-In-a-Box Team
Imperial College London
For working collaboratively to ensure that undergraduate students could continue to engage with hands-on practical chemistry learning while working remotely.
Imperial鈥檚 Department of 浪花直播 Lab-in-a-Box team worked tirelessly during Covid restrictions to ensure that our undergraduate students studying remotely could continue to engage with practical chemistry and develop their experimental and analytical skills. The team brought together people from across the department to develop bespoke learning approaches, resources and instruments, build large quantities of custom equipment and ensure smooth logistics while delivering experimental kits across the world. The design of our experiment kits centred on three key ideas: - Allowing students to gain interactive experiences in chemistry - Creating an engaging learning environment that allows students to collaborate and feel part of the department while working remotely - Ensuring remote activities were aligned with our on-campus practical experience to enable a smooth transition back to in-person learning The kits that we developed included: The chemical kitchen (Year 1): students developed key lab skills in a familiar and fun kitchen environment. Introduction to synthesis (Year 1): offering students an authentic first synthetic chemistry experiment. Lego spectrometer (Year 1): students were sent kits allowing them to carry out our Lego spectrometer experiment at home, building a working instrument from scratch. Measuring molecular fluorescence (Year 2): mini spectrometers developed and built in-house were sent to our students which they used to measure the fluorescence of quinine under UV light. Computer-controlled experiments (Year 3): students used a custom developed control module and their own computers to build automated experiments, and explore how conductors and semiconductors behave.
Biography
The Lab-in-a-Box team brought together people from across the Imperial College London Department of 浪花直播's technical, teaching fellow and academic groups to deliver bespoke instruments, resources and approaches to enable remote hands-on practical chemistry learning.
浪花直播 is a great enabler of all other natural sciences. It provides a versatile toolbox for addressing some of the most significant scientific, economic and social grand challenges that we face today, such as climate change, the generation of novel materials, drug discovery and building artificial cells in the lab.
Imperial College London, 浪花直播 Lab-In-a-Box Team
Q&A with Imperial College London, 浪花直播 Lab-In-a-Box Team
Who or what inspires you?
Luke Delmas: Imperial College has a long tradition of providing our students a high level of laboratory experience, designed to develop the practical, analytical and theoretical skills required to work in the sector. I am inspired by the students themselves, who arrive with a contagious enthusiasm for laboratory classes that grows during their time at the College. We enjoy countless 鈥榣ightbulb鈥� moments during our time spent in the lab, teaching the students not just how to do the practical things that chemists do, but how to think and problem-solve like a scientist. During lockdown, we saw one of our top priorities as being able to deliver at-home labs in a way that gave as authentic an experience as possible, where those inspiring moments and conversations could still happen.
What motivates you?
DeeJay Kistnah: My motivation comes from seeing our students progress in their studies and their exploration of chemistry, knowing that I have supported their development and inspired them along the way. The support and guidance of my fellow colleagues is essential in this, and our work during the Covid-19 pandemic was testament to our ability to get together and continue our role as facilitators of learning even in difficult times.
What advice would you give to a young person considering a career in chemistry?
Laura Patel: It鈥檚 great that you鈥檙e considering a career in chemistry! My advice would be to find out more about chemistry and chemists 鈥� there are lots of great resources on the RSC website and elsewhere online and in local libraries. Also, be aware that there are various routes 鈥� e.g. university, vocational courses, apprenticeships 鈥� and that you will need to work hard and persevere as you study chemistry and continue learning throughout your career. Finally, don鈥檛 worry if you don鈥檛 know exactly what career you want, there are a huge variety of jobs within chemistry, with new ones being invented all the time 鈥� your career may involve a job that does not yet exist!
What are the qualities that make your team special?
Luke Delmas: We all really enjoy being part of a team that is truly collaborative. We celebrate the varied experience within the team and recognize that it鈥檚 the collective sum of our strengths that make our projects successful. The remote labs project drew on a huge range of experience extending beyond the core teaching team. Our conversations with suppliers, freight forwarders, safety advisors and so on all came together in the final product. Sharing ideas, troubleshooting together, and most importantly supporting each are all key features of our team.
Can you tell us about a scientific development on the horizon that you are excited about?
Joshua Edel: Now that the labs are in-person we have taken numerous ideas from the lab-in-a-box to maximise learning outcomes whilst at the same time making the material enjoyable. For example, it is not uncommon for students to view laboratory instruments as black boxes. Unfortunately, this can often result in poor experimental results and interpretation. To tackle this issue, labs have recently been designed to enable students to critically think not only about operating principles of the instrument but also to improve experimental outcomes. Importantly, this allows student to gain critical skills in analytical techniques, Python programming, signal optimisation, and improve problem solving ability.
Why is chemistry important?
Alex Ivanov: 浪花直播 is a truly interdisciplinary science. It is the connecting fabric between physics, materials sciences, biology and medicine. Being a chemist often requires a broad knowledge of these disciplines. 浪花直播 is a great enabler of all other natural sciences. It provides a versatile toolbox for addressing some of the most significant scientific, economic and social grand challenges that we face today, such as climate change, the generation of novel materials, drug discovery and building artificial cells in the lab.
What has been a highlight for you (either personally or in your career)?
Nick Brooks: Clearly the Covid pandemic presented huge challenges to education and research in many ways, but the teamwork and innovation that underpinned our work during that time has been amongst the most rewarding parts of my career. From sketching out our initial lab-in-a-box instrument and experimental ideas, through to the development and building of our kits, and seeing the engagement and results of our students, the whole experience was incredibly exciting and has led to developments that continue to have a deep impact on both our teaching and research activities now.
Why do you think teamwork is important in science?
Simon Turner: As with all life's endeavours, the achievement of any goal in science generally requires teamwork. Any individual will have certain strengths but is likely to be better at one or two aspects than be brilliant at all. One team member might excel in practical work, another in the interpretation of the data, while a third might be skilled at getting the results across to the target audience.In our own endeavour to supply kits and devices to our students during lockdown, the scale of the task meant that a team effort was essential. Our team brought together people with the skills to design the instruments and experiments, prepare the components, those with the dexterity (and patience!) to fit the tiny screws to the assembly, and people applying their administrative and logistics skills to organise the despatch of the finished devices by courier. As a team we acted with fantastic efficiency which was important as time was short.
For a bit of fun.
....What is your favourite element?Simon Turner: A difficult choice but I would have to pick bismuth. My own connection with it is its use in solders in which it acts to lower the melting point. I utilise these low melt solders in applications where the metal to be joined has a similar melting point to common solders and thus requires a different approach.Its low toxicity currently makes it a common substitute for the much more toxic lead, in applications requiring mass. In this aspect it is less potentially polluting in the environment.Yet the thing that is most surprising about bismuth is that for a long time it was expected to be radioactive but for inexplicable reasons did not appear to be so. It wasn't until 2003 that a French team managed to discover that the supposedly stable Bi209 was in fact an alpha emitter, but the half life was in the order of a million times longer than the calculated age of the known universe.