Is the cost of home experiments a potential barrier to learning? Experiences from two level one science modules

Project leader(s):  Louise MacBrayne Zoë Chapman

• Theme:  Access, Participation and Success
• Project faculties:  STEM
• Status:  Archived
• Date:  November 2022 to March 2025

Practical work in the form of home experiments has always formed an integral part of the science curriculum for teaching and assessment. The move, however, from printed materials to online delivery has been accompanied by a change in the way science students are expected to engage with home experiments. Up until 2015, students would receive a kit box in the post that contained the necessary materials and equipment required to perform any home experiments within their modules. As students are no longer receiving a practical kit in the post, they are now required to source all materials and facilities needed, themselves.

The current stage one curriculum (S111 and S112), compulsory in many science qualifications, has the expectation that students will be able to purchase and have ready access to equipment needed to perform all experiments at home, with some contributing to core module content and assessment. Some of this equipment is costly, and some items are not easily accessible to some students. Furthermore, there is an expectation that students will have ready access to certain items of household equipment such as fridges and freezers.

This eSTEeM funded project had four overarching research questions:

• Are financially impoverished students being disadvantaged by the expectation to purchase additional equipment needed for home experiments in core level one science modules?
• Are financially impoverished students being disadvantaged by the expectation to use facilities assumed to be in the home (e.g., fridges and freezers)?
• Is the expectation to use facilities assumed to be in the home (e.g., fridges and freezers) and the requirement to purchase equipment for home experiments a barrier to achieving the learning outcomes associated with practical work?
• Is cost the only barrier to achieving learning outcomes associated with home experiment practical work?

The project report summarises findings from an online survey and subsequent semi-structured interviews which showed that students are experiencing issues including but also in addition to cost, associated with the requirement to perform home experiments. Other factors such as availability of consumables and environmental impact are also impacting on students being able, or willing, to conduct home experiments as part of core module content. The importance of producing alternative resources as a viable alternative to home experiments is a key recommendation for modules in both presentation and production. 

Currently, the only alternative resource for any student unable to carry out the home experiments is to provide them with a table of data from which to conduct analysis. However, this does not support development of students’ investigative skills, namely observational skills, or context of why and how the experiment is being conducted. This project piloted a different mechanism for students unable to undertake home experiments for any reason, which is to have the experiment conducted on a video which all students have access to. Students watch the video of the experiment being performed and take their own observations. This allows such students to still achieve the same practical based learning outcomes as other students who can set up home experiments themselves, thereby improving parity of student experience.

Other key recommendations from the project emphasise the need to re-evaluate the use of home experiments at module design, removing the assumption of module teams that all students have ready access to equipment and consumables. Further, it is recommended that module teams take a collaborative approach to constructing equipment lists so there are no duplications, and an agreed description of the items needed. This comes from the finding that there were items on the equipment list identifying the same item in different ways, for example, a calculator was described first as a “calculator”, but a second entry on the list required a “pocket calculator”. The unnecessary repetition may result in students buying an item more than once as the instructions are not clear. Such opacity may also disadvantage certain students with neurodiversity who require clear instruction.

A wider recommendation focuses on the need to provide home experiment kits either at a small additional fixed cost or means tested for students on low income.

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