Lived experiences of science education: a preliminary exploration of students' experiences in virtual and traditional science laboratories in further education

Purpose This study investigates students' perspectives of the quality of their experiences learning in both traditional and virtual laboratories (VL); this is important as many settings are moving toward an expanded digital delivery. Design/methodology/approach This paper describes part of a small-scale study of level 3 science students in a large Further Education college. Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews of students and staff were used to investigate learning in both traditional and VL. A thematic analysis was carried out, gaining insights into users' views and experiences. Findings Differences in experience between traditional and VL were identified through themes of reality, control, skills, theory, truth and risk. The paper focuses on students' experience, in terms of presence and agency (related to reality and control): these two parameters can be expressed using a matrix representation, providing an analytical tool for comparing experience in traditional and VL. The results of the study suggest that students have a richer and more fulfilling experience in a traditional laboratory, compared to the VL. Research limitations/implications This is a limited study which would benefit from being repeated with a larger sample of participants and a range of VL types. The more extensive use of mixed methods may also help to widen the range of participants and generalisability of the findings. Additionally, the work could be extended to test the orthogonality assumption for presence and agency through a series of experiments. These would test users’ responses to comparisons of real, remote, virtual reality and screen VL configurations, together with applications providing various levels of agency. Originality/value This work records science students' and teachers' views of learning in traditional and VL. This is an under-reported topic; in particular, there is a lack of qualitative research. Moreover, there is limited research on the experiences of Further Education students. This report provides an insight into the experiences of teachers and learners by focusing on their responses related to their reported feelings of presence and agency. A novel analysis, based on these parameters, is proposed, which could provide a framework for improving learner experience in VLs.