Johnston Jill, Kant Sashi, Gysbers Vanessa, Hancock Dale, Denyer Gareth
School of Molecular Biosciences, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
Biochem Mol Biol Educ. 2014 Jan-Feb;42(1):50-7. doi: 10.1002/bmb.20754. Epub 2013 Dec 20.
Despite many apparent advantages, including security, back-up, remote access, workflow, and data management, the use of electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs) in the modern research laboratory is still developing. This presents a challenge to instructors who want to give undergraduate students an introduction to the kinds of data curation and notebook keeping skills that will inevitably be required as ELNs penetrate normal laboratory practice. An additional problem for the teacher is that ELNs do not generally have student-administrative functions and are prohibitively expensive. In this report, we describe the use and impact of an ePortfolio system as a surrogate ELN. Introduction of the system led to several pedagogic outcomes, namely: increased preparedness of students for class, encouragement of creativity and reflection with respect to experimental methods, greatly enhanced engagement between students and tutors, and it gave instructors the ability to scrutinize original data files and monitor student-tutor feedback cycles. However, implementation led to a disruption of tutor workloads and incurred new levels of accountability that threatened to undermine the initiative. Through course evaluations and other reflective processes, we reached an appreciation of how an ELN should be introduced into practical class teaching so that it not only becomes an appropriate aid for teaching the laboratory experience, but also becomes a life-long resource for students.
尽管电子实验室笔记本（ELN）具有诸多明显优势，包括安全性、备份、远程访问、工作流程和数据管理等，但在现代研究实验室中的应用仍在不断发展。这给希望向本科生介绍数据管理和笔记本记录技能的教师带来了挑战，因为随着ELN逐渐融入常规实验室实践，这些技能将不可避免地被需要。教师面临的另一个问题是，ELN通常不具备学生管理功能，而且价格昂贵。在本报告中，我们描述了电子档案袋系统作为替代ELN的使用情况及其影响。该系统的引入带来了几个教学成果，即：提高了学生的课堂准备程度，鼓励了学生对实验方法的创造性思考和反思，极大地增强了学生与导师之间的互动，并且使教师能够审查原始数据文件并监控学生与导师之间的反馈循环。然而，实施过程导致了教师工作量的中断，并产生了新的问责层面，这有可能破坏该计划。通过课程评估和其他反思过程，我们认识到应如何将ELN引入实践课堂教学，使其不仅成为教授实验室经验的合适辅助工具，而且成为学生的终身资源。
