Unique Data Sets and Bespoke Laboratory Videos: Teaching and Assessing of Experimental Methods and Data Analysis in a Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the move to online teaching and assessment. This has created challenges in teaching laboratory skills and producing assessments that are robust and fair. Our solution was to use bespoke laboratory videos to provide laboratory training and to generate unique data sets for each student in coursework and exams. For assessments, R was used to produce student data packs comprising data and images, and associated staff answer files with plotted data and worked answers. In the new open-book online environment, this approach enabled us to create assessments that were the students’ own work with no evidence of student collusion. We observed no difference in student performance for the coursework or exam: The mean and median marks for the course remained the same as in previous years.