By Vvon Engineering Team | Published | Updated
The arithmetic that decides a station count: section size rather than class size, group size, experiment duration against the timetable slot, the rotation cycle, and the allowance for one rig being out of service.
Scientific & laboratory RFQ checklist (TXT)
Station count should come from the students present in each session, the experiment duration and the assessment method. Annual intake alone does not show how many usable stations the room needs.
Start from the section, not the class. If sixty students are admitted a year and the timetable splits them into two laboratory sections of thirty, the room only ever holds thirty. Then apply one of two models.
Parallel model. Every group does the same experiment at the same time. Stations needed equals section size divided by group size. Thirty students in groups of four needs eight identical stations.
In a rotation model, plan one available assignment for every group in a session. Eight groups require eight simultaneous places, which may be eight different experiments or a mixture with duplicates. The number of weeks follows the complete timetable, including experiments that span sessions or share apparatus.
Most engineering departments run the rotation because it is far cheaper. The cost of the rotation is timetable rigidity: the cycle length is fixed by the number of experiments, so eight experiments consumes eight teaching weeks with no room for a public holiday, a breakdown or a makeup session. Plan the cycle one or two experiments shorter than the number of usable weeks.
Choose group size so each student can perform the intended tasks and demonstrate the required learning. The appropriate size varies with safety, apparatus access and the assessment; it cannot be reduced to one universal number.
If the equipment budget cannot support the intended hands-on time, compare additional sessions, rotations, smaller sections or justified demonstrations. Record how individual competence will still be assessed.
Four situations override the simple calculation.
Sixty students admitted, two sections of thirty, groups of four, eight groups in the room, a three hour slot and roughly twelve usable teaching weeks. A workable pattern is eight to ten different experiments on rotation, of which two are duplicated so a group can be doubled when something fails, giving ten to twelve pieces of apparatus in the room.
Spend that budget unevenly and on purpose. Buy multiples of the cheap fundamentals, the ones every section needs in the first weeks of term: a Hooke's law unit, a jar test apparatus, a digital logic module, a beam deflection rig. Buy one each of the mid-cost rigs. Buy the expensive item once and timetable around it. Compare the added student contact time with the learning outcomes that require a particular instrument; price alone cannot decide educational value.
Then write the rotation before the tender is issued. If a plausible twelve week timetable cannot be drawn on one sheet of paper with the equipment list you are about to buy, the list is wrong, and it is far cheaper to find that out now than after delivery.
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