lab fees mostly labor? IHE

[polly_mer]

https://insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/lab-fees-when-courses-are-online

Matt Reed asserts that lab fees are much more labor than consumables.  That seems wrong to me since every time I've been asked to set a lab fee, it was based on consumables and wear-and-tear on equipment to ensure we could replace on a reasonable schedule.  I certainly didn't get paid more the terms I had labs than the terms I didn't.

Of course, none of my lab teaching ever had any lab support beyond the occasional part-time student worker making minimum wage.

[marshwiggle]

https://insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/lab-fees-when-courses-are-online

Matt Reed asserts that lab fees are much more labor than consumables.  That seems wrong to me since every time I've been asked to set a lab fee, it was based on consumables and wear-and-tear on equipment to ensure we could replace on a reasonable schedule.  I certainly didn't get paid more the terms I had labs than the terms I didn't.

Of course, none of my lab teaching ever had any lab support beyond the occasional part-time student worker making minimum wage.

We don't have lab fees outside of things with consumables here. In fact, in electronics labs even fried components are just part of the lab budget, so there's no fee for students.  This fall, when my labs will be online, students will have to purchase a kit for the labs, but they keep it when they're done and none of the money comes to the university.

[FishProf]

Our lab fees are lab fees in name only (LFINO).  NO matter how many or how few students we have, we get the same lab budget. The fees go into the black hole of the general fund.

If we ONLY got the lab fees charged for courses in our department, we would more than triple our annual budget.

Oh, and the all online summer courses?  Also charged the lab fee.

[mythbuster]

Our lab fees are used for consumables and maintenance of lab equipment.  The fees are kept within the department. Now each lab course is charges the same amount, around $50. Not all of our labs accrue $50 per students in expenses. So the funds from the cheap labs are used to subsidize the more expensive senior level labs. In my lab I often tell the students the day in lab where they have "spent" the lab fee paid for that one course. Since I teach one of the expensive labs, that day is in week 2-3 of the course.
   This Fall, any course with an online lab we have waived the lab fees. We will see what downstream effect that has on our department. I know there are admins at higher levels advocating to eliminate all lab fees.

[sprout]

I don't know the exact budgeting numbers, but it's probably true for us.  We have two lab techs for the sciences, plus a limited hour worker.  (Two pre-covid, now we're down to one.)  The limited hour worker, at least, is paid from lab fees, it might not be 100% for the techs.  Fees also go to consumables, service contracts, replacement of non-consumables...

We are keeping the lab fees on this summer and fall, even though most classes are going online.  Consumables use will be down quite a bit, but we still need the labor* and we need consumables for take-home kits for several courses.  We're also using some of the fees to facilitate online labs, such as subscribing to lab simulation or anatomy modeling resources.

*With very few in-person labs the day-to-day prep work has gone down, but running socially distanced labs means splitting students into separate rooms, so we're using our techs to help monitor.

[kaysixteen]

Remind me what exactly a lab science college class done entirely online actually consists of, and how valuable, for the students, such a class could possibly be?

[polly_mer]

Remind me what exactly a lab science college class done entirely online actually consists of, and how valuable, for the students, such a class could possibly be?

It depends.

General education astronomy courses go pretty well online because the observations are done outside of class anyway.  The course then focuses on analysis and often good simulations.

Kitchen chemistry augmented by kits shipped to homes and online interactives can be good enough.  It's not sufficient for majors who need specific experiences with equipment, but demonstrating most of the principles for general education can be done.

Likewise, 'kitchen' geology, physics, and biology can be done with shipped kits and online interactives, but those are not sufficient for students who need specific prerequisites.

[marshwiggle]

Remind me what exactly a lab science college class done entirely online actually consists of, and how valuable, for the students, such a class could possibly be?

It depends.

General education astronomy courses go pretty well online because the observations are done outside of class anyway.  The course then focuses on analysis and often good simulations.

Kitchen chemistry augmented by kits shipped to homes and online interactives can be good enough.  It's not sufficient for majors who need specific experiences with equipment, but demonstrating most of the principles for general education can be done.

Likewise, 'kitchen' geology, physics, and biology can be done with shipped kits and online interactives, but those are not sufficient for students who need specific prerequisites.

To follow up with this, if there are two or three courses in a sequence, it may be that having one of them in person can, *in principle, cover many of the deficiencies in the purely online experience.

(*So, for instance, if a vaccine allows courses to be in-person in Fall 2021, labs for a course at the end of a sequence might be adjusted to give students exposure to the equipment and techniques that they weren't able to address online. Conversely, if students had the first labs in the sequence in person before covid, then the fact that they won't get more exposure to techniques from there may not be too big a problem.)

[sprout]

Remind me what exactly a lab science college class done entirely online actually consists of, and how valuable, for the students, such a class could possibly be?

It depends heavily on the purpose of the lab.  For many classes, learning how to do specific techniques and use specialized equipment is a key objective.  Those labs cannot be replicated online, and may only be partially replicable with at-home kits.  This applies mostly to majors labs.

For other classes (mostly non-majors), the point of the lab is to reinforce principles being learned in lecture, or to gain familiarity with the processes of science.  In many cases, these labs can be reasonably replicated with analysis of online simulations or the 'kitchen science' that polly_mer mentioned or observations made outside of the classroom.

As with pretty much everything, you start from, "What do my students need to get from this experience?"

[apl68]

Likewise, 'kitchen' geology, physics, and biology can be done with shipped kits and online interactives, but those are not sufficient for students who need specific prerequisites.

This conjures visions of students conducting labs at home using those break-your-own-geode and terrarium-in-a-box kits you see in hobby stores.  I assume the interactives you're referring to are more sophisticated than that.

[marshwiggle]

Likewise, 'kitchen' geology, physics, and biology can be done with shipped kits and online interactives, but those are not sufficient for students who need specific prerequisites.

This conjures visions of students conducting labs at home using those break-your-own-geode and terrarium-in-a-box kits you see in hobby stores.  I assume the interactives you're referring to are more sophisticated than that.

One thing to realize that even many things like that aimed at a "hobbyist" crowd can be used for more than that by a highly educated instructor in the context of a course with lots of related content. It's not just limited by the kit contents.

[sprout]

Likewise, 'kitchen' geology, physics, and biology can be done with shipped kits and online interactives, but those are not sufficient for students who need specific prerequisites.

This conjures visions of students conducting labs at home using those break-your-own-geode and terrarium-in-a-box kits you see in hobby stores.  I assume the interactives you're referring to are more sophisticated than that.

One thing to realize that even many things like that aimed at a "hobbyist" crowd can be used for more than that by a highly educated instructor in the context of a course with lots of related content. It's not just limited by the kit contents.

Exactly.  It's not always what you do, it's the analysis of what you do. I've seen a great, rigorous chemistry lab built around tie-dying.  But that being said, you can put very sophisticated kits together.  There are companies that will do it for you or profs can put their own together for students.

[polly_mer]

Likewise, 'kitchen' geology, physics, and biology can be done with shipped kits and online interactives, but those are not sufficient for students who need specific prerequisites.

This conjures visions of students conducting labs at home using those break-your-own-geode and terrarium-in-a-box kits you see in hobby stores.  I assume the interactives you're referring to are more sophisticated than that.

Have you seen https://phet.colorado.edu/?  I used many things from there during regular labs for non-majors to really explore what's supposed to happen in the model.

[Aster]

I have worked at institutions where laboratory course fees were dumped into the general fund of the academic department.

I have also worked at institutions where laboratory course fees were dumped into the general fund for the entire university.

And at every single institution I've worked at, nearly all students, over half of the professors, and even some administrators still believed that the funds went directly into the specific course. I have yet to work anywhere that actually does that, despite sometimes over half of the departmental faculty (including the department head) thinking otherwise. I have learned that if I want to know the truth about where laboratory courses fees actually end up, the only reliable source of information is the departmental secretary.

[OneMoreYear]

The lab fees for the lab course I teach go into our general department fund. Each year I submit a request for equipment and consumables that are theoretically paid for by the lab fees.  Most years, the lab fees do not cover the cost of materials, so there is some other portion of our departmental slush that is supplementing.