Effectiveness of Online Labs Teacher Training Workshop

Online Labs or OLabs refers to a virtual learning system for the conduct/management of practicals in a laboratory. OLabs can be configured to handle practical experiments from various subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Biology Mathematics and English, etc. Besides the theory on which it is based, each experiment may involve one or more procedure, simulator, animation, videos, viva voce questions, and links to other relevant resources. A teacher training workshop was conducted using OLabs, where teachers were instructed on the planning and setup of Lab experiments for secondary (9th & 10th grade) and senior secondary (11th & 12th grade) classes. The aim of this study was to comprehend the effectiveness of deployment of the OLabs tool for teacher training. Likert-analysis of the ensuing workshop-survey revealed that a majority of teachers were in favor of, and even repeat the OLabs experiments. Majority of the respondents were convinced that OLabs systems offer an improved understanding of theoretical concepts. Albeit they may not entirely replace the real physical labs, OLabs can provide numerous opportunities for enhanced learning of basic concepts.