Non‐stop lab week: a real laboratory experience for life sciences postgraduate courses

Abstract

At the Portuguese universities, practical classes of life sciences are usually professor-centered 2-hour classes. This approach results in students underprepared for a real work environment in a research/clinical laboratory. To provide students with a real-life laboratory environment, the Non-Stop Lab Week (NSLW) was created in the Molecular Biomedicine master program at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. The unique feature of the NSLW is its intensity: during a 1-week period, students perform a subcloning and a protein expression project in an environment that mimics a real laboratory. Students work autonomously, and the progression of work depends on achieving the daily goals. Throughout the three curricular years, most students considered the intensity of the NSLW a very good experience and fundamental for their future. Moreover, after some experience in a real laboratory, students state that both the techniques and the environment created in the NSLW were similar to what they experience in their current work situation. The NSLW fulfills a gap in postgraduate students' learning, particularly in practical skills and scientific thinking. Furthermore, the NSLW experience provides skills to the students that are crucial to their future research area.