Badge of honour

We frequently discuss the importance of the mastery of hands-on lab skills in chemistry education. This is because a lack of such skills compromises the ability of students to explain phenomena based on experimental evidence and can lead to a failure to recognise the chemical context of problems encountered during instruction. Any observer of practical work will appreciate that students frequently employ incorrect technique, resulting in imprecise measurements that impact on calculations and subsequent explanations. A key factor in this is the lack of time for direct assessment of lab skills, with a reliance on post-lab written reports preventing the diagnosis and correction of poor technique. In this article, Marcy Towns and colleagues outline the benefits of digital badging in addressing these problems.

David Read summarises and reviews the article.