The Role of Skill Assessments in an Undergraduate Non‐Majors Biochemistry Lab Course

Non‐majors lab courses tend to enroll students of varying skill and engagement levels, and students often find it challenging to focus both on the goals and principles of their experiments, as well as the development of lab skills. Practical skills assessments are time consuming to implement, and can be stressful to students, which can impact their performance in the course. However, precision and accuracy in lab skills leads to more reliable experimental data, which was hypothesized would increase student engagement and overall knowledge gains in addition to development of core competencies. This study investigated the improvement in basic lab skills, including liquid handling, data handling, time‐management, in a non‐majors biochemistry lab course following the implementation of formal practical skills assessments as part of the overall course grade. Low‐stakes, relatively simple assessments were implemented as part of midterm and final exams, to minimize students' anxiety at taking a practical exam and minimize additional study/practice time required. Students had the opportunity to practice the specific skills several times throughout their regular coursework, and were provided with benchmarks against which they could measure their own skill competencies. Implementation of these skill assessments resulted in dramatic improvements in the quality of student's experimental data throughout the lab course, which likely also contributed to increases observed in overall knowledge gains. In addition, students gained more confidence in their own skills and their ability to implement those skills in other labs.