"The use of a web-based virtual laboratory (V-Lab) for teaching introductory practical studies of human structure and function in the movement sciences"

Students access a web-based online laboratory (V-Lab) to help them prepare to use particular fitness testing equipment. V-Lab provides background information about each particular fitness area, photographs of various testing equipment, procedural information about how to conduct a particular fitness test and a data-processing facility where students can calculate results and submit them to a dynamic database.

The sequence of activities students conduct is as follows:

1. Students work through the information provided in V-lab about each area of fitness (that is, they study the background information, photographs of testing equipment and procedural information about how to conduct various fitness tests).
2. Students apply the knowledge (gained from studying the information in V-Lab) by conducting a series of tests using the actual equipment in the real laboratory.
3. Students calculate the results of their tests using the V-Lab data processing facility and submit their results in the V-Lab data processing database facility for the purpose of comparing their test results to both those of their classmates and to accepted national normative data.
4. Results are used to provide class normative data analysed according to gender and age. Individual results are also compared to national normative data. Students are then requested to summarise this information into a client fitness test report.

This 4-step sequence is repeated for each area of fitness, thus students learn about all aspects of fitness in V-Lab before they conduct the fitness tests in the “real” lab.

The web site, face-to-face tutors and other academic and support staff support students throughout this 4-step process.

The use of V-Lab has created efficiencies in delivery of unit material as students are able to spend less time in the actual laboratory and they are better prepared for real laboratory work.

Comment from the Project Team...

The evaluators that examined this exemplar commented that the design of the V-Lab calculator/simulator provides a useful model that could be utilised for other mathematical/physics-related contexts and the ability of the students to enter their own skinfold data is the major innovative aspect of this learning design.

This exemplar has been selected for inclusion for the following reason:

• It represents a learning design that utilises ICT to enable students to practice concepts before applying them to laboratory equipment and to minimise overcrowding campus laboratories. Such an approach offers the following advantages of:
  • creating efficiencies in delivery of unit material as students are able to spend less time in the actual laboratory; and
  • enabling students to be better prepared for real laboratory work.