Hands-on or minds-on? Teaching and measuring critical thinking in labs

The goals of lab courses have been highly debated for decades with not much research to back up any position. Recent work has suggested that, given the resources that go into them, labs are not efficient for reinforcing conceptual understanding. In this talk, I will describe new research into the goals of lab courses, especially how they can be used to developing critical thinking skills. I will also discuss how we are designing ways to measure student progress towards those goals, and the efficacy of different approaches for achieving them.