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Equity and Inclusion in STEM Lab Courses

STEM labs are unique learning spaces that offer specific opportunities and challenges for supporting the learning of students from historically excluded and currently underrepresented groups.

This resource identifies course design and practice elements to improve equity and inclusion in STEM lab courses and can help STEM lab teaching team members:

  • Identify laboratory course design and practice elements that support inclusive pedagogy
  • Tailor and incorporate selected instructional design and practice elements to their lab course(s)
  • Communicate the rationale for course design and practice elements with other members of the course teaching team and enrolled students

This guide is a shortened version of the more in-depth resource, Equity and Inclusion in STEM Lab Courses, developed by Alex Engel and contributors for the Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning. Refer to the full document for more recommendations, references, and suggested resources.

High impact instructional practices

The three priority instructional design and practice elements listed below can be implemented in many STEM contexts to improve lab course equity and inclusion. 

  • Share learning goals: explicitly link lab activities and exercises to learning goals, and help students understand what they need to do to achieve the lab and field course learning goals.
  • Support and structure equitable collaborative work and intra-team communication by building teams and assigning partners with a range of previous experience and interests, using and rotating assigned roles. 
  • Incorporate experiments that allow students to pursue an unknown answer instead of a predetermined solution.

 Additional evidence-based strategies to support equity and inclusion in lab courses are organized by lab course element in the next section.

Instructional practices by lab course element

Learning goals, assessments, and grading

Opportunities

  • Learning goals for lab and field courses can address experimental design, technical skills, data analysis, science communication, and science identity to support the growth of both novice and more lab-experienced students. 
  • Lab and field courses are one space to train students how to identify opportunities, apply, and obtain mentored research opportunities in research groups. This important career development step remains opaque and less accessible to underrepresented student groups.
  • Lab courses can integrate learning goals that address antiracism, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (AJEDI) in research design and research outcomes.
  • Given the importance of sustained effort, resilience, and creativity in research, lab, and field courses are excellent opportunities to match assessment criteria to these behaviors and skills.

Challenges

  • As students enter lab and field courses with big differences in previous experience, finding learning goals and exercises to support the range of novice to experienced students is a challenge.
  • There are more lab and field-relevant learning goals that a single course can address effectively.
  • Incorporating AJEDI learning objectives into a lab course takes work to integrate with the timing and assessments of a lab course and can face resistance from students and colleagues.
  • Creating assessments and grading systems to appropriately challenge and motivate the range of lab and field experiences among students is difficult.

Instructional practices for equity and inclusion

  • Evaluate and select course-level learning goals that are authentic and transferable.
  • Incorporate learning goals that build science identity and support student learning about the institutions, practice, and training paths in science.
  • Base grades on consistent assignment completion, effort, resilience, and creativity and support student learning with constructive feedback and encouragement.
  • To mirror the research process, give students opportunities to practice, revise, iterate, and/or reassess in lab and field courses.
  • Allow students to demonstrate learning in multiple ways including written work, presentations, and technical assessments.
  • Use backward design to support authentic final lab and field projects by scaffolding with smaller assignments that develop lab and field, data analysis, and science communication skills, and allow students to build confidence in their abilities. 
  • Explicitly name and define important lab and field skills, and be clear about the purpose of assignments, criteria, and pathways for success.
  • Use lab and field courses as a platform to share opportunities and teach the process for obtaining mentored research positions.
  • Introduce AJEDI learning objectives and integrate readings, videos, activities, and assessments that support these learning objectives.
  • Evaluate if assessments are focused on helping students meet the course learning goals. 
  • To support growth and collaboration in a challenging learning environment, consider employing Pass/NC grading, criterion-referenced grading, or an alternative to score-based grading. Grading on a curve (using a normal distribution) is not well matched to model the purposeful activity of lab and field course learning and can exacerbate systemic inequities.

Stanford resources and groups

Examples in disciplinary context: microbiology
Miller et al. list learning objectives that address diversity, racism, and inclusion in the context of a lab course with matching assessments, activities, and instructor actions. Suggested AJEDI objectives include “Analyze ways in which racism acts as a barrier to health equity” and “Integrate skills to demonstrate an increased capacity to work across diverse cultures, perspectives, and backgrounds.”

Variability in previous laboratory and research experience

Opportunities

Lab and field courses can support multiple levels of learner preparation and contribute to closing the preparation gap among students. The smaller sections, greater opportunity for students to interact with the teaching team, and active learning nature of lab and field courses in particular support this goal.

Challenges

Due to variations in education resources at the K-12 level and systemic barriers, students enter lab courses with a wide range of preparation. As students move through the undergraduate curriculum these disparities can persist or widen.

Design and practice strategies for equity and inclusion

  • Share learning goals, explicitly link lab activities and exercises to learning goals, and help students understand what they need to do to achieve the lab and field course learning goals
  • Introduce and practice basic techniques in the first lab section meeting.
  • Build supporting links into pre-course materials for students with less familiarity to find additional information.
  • Create supplemental videos, host lab or field preview sessions, or dedicate office hours to less prepared students to allow students with little or no previous experience additional opportunities to build familiarity with the learning spaces and instruments.
  • Survey students about their experience and challenges they expect to encounter at the start of the course.
  • Perform ungraded or low-stakes assessments or self-reflections of student understanding early in the course and require students who need additional support to meet with a teaching team member.

Stanford resources and groups

Learning space accessibility

Opportunities

  • Lab and field courses provide an excellent opportunity for students to learn about safety and norms, and practice doing the science they are learning. 
  • By discussing norms, belonging, and inclusion as a learning community, all students can recognize responsibilities and barriers and explicitly work to support colleagues and instructors in creating a more inclusive and equitable learning community.

Challenges

  • Laboratories and field sites present additional physical barriers compared to classrooms and additional challenges for students with non-physically-limiting disabilities. 
  • Students may have a little experience before to the course to help them develop norms and behaviors for working, learning, and interacting in the laboratory or field site.

Design and practice strategies for equity and inclusion

  • To inclusively support the participation and learning of students with disabilities instructors should research universal design principles in their field and collaborate with a home institution’s office of accessibility staff to provide accommodations. 
  • Use universal design principles and examine ways to include students with physically-limiting disabilities (e.g., wheelchair users, people with low vision and color vision deficiency) as well as non-physically limiting disabilities (e.g., ADHD, autism). See the References and resources list below for a few laboratory- and field-specific examples.

Stanford resources and groups

Representation, science identity, anti-racism

Opportunities

  • By discussing norms, belonging, and inclusion as a learning community, all students can recognize responsibilities and barriers and explicitly work to support colleagues and instructors in creating a more inclusive and equitable learning community.
  • Lab and field courses and an excellent curricular space to present the training steps, scientific contributions, and career achievements of diverse scientists. See the references and resources section for links to websites that highlight the important contributions of underrepresented scientists to science and the scientific community.
  • Building a diverse lab and field course teaching team of faculty, instructors, and TAs can promote engagement and communication with students from underrepresented and first-gen low-income backgrounds.

Challenges

  • Students from underrepresented groups often find it difficult to locate role models in research that they can identify with because of skewed representation and visibility across STEM disciplines.
  • The group of faculty and instructors in STEM departments at most colleges and universities is less diverse than the student population and this disparity can be a barrier for students to approach their instructors about their learning.

Design and practice strategies for equity and inclusion

  • Share stories and materials highlighting the experimental work and training experiences of underrepresented scientists at different training stages in their careers.
  • Use assignments and student reflections to have students engage with the evidence on gender and sexuality bias, racial bias, and ableism in science and engineering.
  • Have students create an asset map to recognize their skills and strengths.
  • Elicit and connect students' goals and values to course outcomes.
  • Create a lab and field culture of safety (including psychological safety) and productivity and shared success.
  • Discuss learning from failed experiments and growth mindset; curate and share Tweets and other communications from scientists that highlight their challenges, successes, and frustrations with the larger community of science and engineering
  • Have students reflect on their growth and learning across the lab course learning experience
  • Recruit, train, and support TAs and teaching team members who bring diverse perspectives and identities to the teaching team.

Stanford resources and groups

Structuring and facilitating group work

Opportunities

In authentic research, a large fraction of science is completed by interdependent research teams. Supporting student practice in teamwork and communication achieves the development of a valuable transferable skill.

Challenges

  • Creating criterion-based and equitable student teams involves additional information collection steps. 
  • Whether team composition is set by instructors or selected by students, instructors must invest time to equitably support communication about and resolution of student-team conflicts. 
  • Supporting team communication and effectiveness requires allocating coursework time and assignments toward these goals.

Design and practice strategies for equity and inclusion

  • Support and structure equitable collaborative work and intra-team communication by building teams and assigning partners with a range of previous experience and interests, using and rotating assigned roles. 
  • Provide teams the opportunity to create team norms/charters and supply best practices for mediating conflicts. Use class time and assignments to reflect on team interactions and communicate with teammates. 
  • Have student teams create a team asset chart and discuss the value of divergent thinking at various project stages.

Stanford resources and groups

Selection of lab projects and exercises

Opportunities

  • Selecting research projects for lab and field courses that seek novel findings for relevant questions using iteration and collaboration better model authentic science and engineering tasks and can improve student self-efficacy, development of science identity, and persistence in STEM. 
  • Running real experiments allows students to pursue an unknown answer instead of a predetermined solution.
  • Lab and field projects that have personal connections and relevance to students can boost engagement and retention in STEM disciplines. 
  • Lab and field learning can support classroom learning in a linked course by adding complementary practical, active, and in-depth experiences.

Challenges

  • It is more difficult to precisely predict lab or field projects and student needs when investigating science questions without defined answers.
  • Lab and field exercises that match instructor expertise, are affordable, are novel, and connect to students' interests and community needs are challenging to identify and support.
  • Attempting to match lab or field learning with classroom learning in a linked course can be challenging because of the fast classroom pace, and few appropriate matching lab and field exercises.

Design and practice strategies for equity and inclusion

  • Evaluate and select lab and field exercises guided by the lab or field course learning goals.
  • Allowing for student-designed research questions can boost project ownership and engagement.
  • Having students reflect on the challenges and failures that occur when running a course-based research project can enhance their perception of the authenticity of the research they are participating in. 
  • Engaging in authentic community issues and partnering with outside stakeholders (e.g., place-based learning and community-engaged learning) can improve student belonging and persistence.
  • Traditional lab and field courses that focus on technical skill development by having students achieve an expected outcome can be gradually adjusted to incorporate short authentic inquiry projects that last for just one or a few weeks.
  • Incorporate experiments that allow students to pursue an unknown answer instead of a predetermined solution.
  • Gradually build the complexity and challenge of lab work to allow students to build familiarity with concepts and skills, and confidence in their abilities

Stanford resources and groups

Teaching team and student interactions  

Opportunities

  • Longer lab and field class meeting times and decentralized learning community focus allow teaching team members to interact with students and student teams to a greater extent than most classroom environments.
  • By presenting diversity in identity and thinking as a benefit to advancing humanity’s science knowledge, lab and field instructors can help to recruit and retain underrepresented students into their fields.

Challenges

Many instructors do not feel prepared to discuss racism, privilege, and inequities in their field with their students. 

Design and practice strategies for equity and inclusion

  • Teaching team members can share the arc of their lab and field skills development and communicate a belief in their students’ ability to learn and succeed.
  • Teaching team members should be prepared to intervene if they observe microaggressions and emphasize lab and field norms that support equity and inclusion. 
  • Self-assess if the teaching team is equitably dividing their time with lab pairs/groups.
  • Instructors can maximize interacting with students (e.g., one-on-one dialog, questioning students and student team) and serve as a “guide-on-the-side” by intentionally engaging in these activities and minimizing time spent lecturing, monitoring, and completing administrative tasks. 
  • Discuss with teaching assistants equity and inclusion course design elements and teaching practices.
  • Instructors should discuss student engagement and lab partner/team performance with TAs during regular teaching team meetings.

Stanford resources and groups

Scheduling, enrollment, and course costs

Opportunities

  • Long-time blocks used in lab and field courses allow the opportunity for students to experience the time that protocols and exercises take to better understand what doing science entails and to learn how to effectively sequence and schedule lab and field tasks.
  • If students are aware of the cost of consumables, equipment, and human resources, they can evaluate the accessibility of science and the benefits of low-cost and adaptable technologies.

Challenges

  • Long lab section time blocks, lab work that falls outside of normally scheduled section meeting times, and field-based travel time contribute to additional time requirements for students and the instructional team.
  • Laboratory space, reagents, software, transportation, and instructional support can increase the monetary costs of running lab and field courses. These costs can result in lab fees passed on to students, enrollment caps that are lower than course demand, and changes to course design to reduce expenses.

Design and practice strategies for equity and inclusion

  • Ensure that students receive course credit equivalent to their ‘seat time’ and outside of lab- and field-associated analysis and work.
  • Because many students have work, caretaking, or other obligations outside of their scheduled class time, provide asynchronous and remote opportunities to view and support tasks that occur outside of class time.
  • Allow for different project speeds across the classroom or schedule class meetings for repetition or iteration to allow students to revise or retry their initial work.
  • Integrate research-based lab courses into the required curriculum so that all students make progress towards their degree by participating.
  • If a lab or field course has more demand than a department can accommodate, instructors should set up an equitable and inclusive course advertising and enrollment selection plan.

Stanford resources and groups

Course assessment

Opportunities and challenges

Instructors can start to assess their lab and field courses without comparison groups to better understand student learning gains and student experiences.

Challenges

Finding a matched lab or field course to run experimental or quasi-experimental studies on course design and practice elements can be difficult. 

Design and practice strategies for equity and inclusion

  • Instructors should assess if learning outcomes and course goals are being met using a combination of student-perception surveys and outcome-measuring coursework.
  • Instructors can assess course equity and inclusion performance by asking targeted questions in formative and summative course evaluations and monitoring the learning gains and grade outcomes of their students for evidence of broad access to learning or barriers to particular groups of students.
  • Instructors can set up exit interviews with students who dropped the lab course or experienced course concepts or peer interaction challenges to better understand how to address major barriers for this important subset of students.

Stanford resources and groups

Feedback and contributors

Please send comments, feedback, and suggestions on the content and organization of this resource to Alex Engel (aengel@stanford.edu).

Contributors: Alex Engel, Aaron Putzke, Daria Hekmat-Scafe, Isaac Applebaum, Jocelyn Nardo, Kritika Yegnashankaran, Rajan Kumar, Shima Salehi, Susan Walsh, Tara Phelps-Durr, and Zelda Love.

Equity and Inclusion in STEM Lab Courses: Teaching Practices Guide for Lab Course Development and Iteration (2022) by Alex Engel is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.