After each group gets done with a lab I try to talk to each group about what they learned & to help them understand each lesson. This way I can address questions in a smaller group before we reveiw as a class. This can take 5 to 10 minutes per group & as a class can be anywhere from an hour or two.
I also utilyze my real life situation as well as ask for their's. This helps them connect and see the value of the lesson since this is what they will be doing in order to become successful.I encourage the students to use the what worked, didn't, and solution practice out in the culinary industry at the end of every day. I did that throughout my career.
During lecture, but especially after, I take the concepts presented and turn them into "real-life" situations. We discuss several situations, which takes about 30% of class time.
I teach a technical program where most of our lab activities are based on images students see on their own computer screens. They work in groups to answer questions based on these images. After the 2 hr lab session, I put the same images used during lab onto the overhead projector. We take about 20 minutes to go over each answer from lab.
I believe that you need to set a firm schedule and make sure that you have enough time to completely debrief the objectives of your day. Write down the objective or competencies that you want to verify the learners have understood. I personally think it is better to have set aside too much time than not enough. For me, I can always discuss objectives longer or in greater detail if I have extra time. However if I have not set enough time than I may have to leave something out that I had intended on covering. Many consider the debriefing part of class to be the most important part leading to learner understanding so you may want to consider that when budgeting the time allotted.
Depending on the subject matter and whether we were in lab at the end of the day or class we use two methods. If we are coming in from lab and clean-up I will go round-robin to everyone in the class and ask them what they learned today. The key to this game is that you can't say or use something that has already been said. If it's been class time I ask the class to discuss their learning for the day by using a questioning technique. Time is sometimes very short but we try to devote 10-15 minutes to a debrief several times a week. After a lab practical exercise or a diagnosis lab we often spend and hour or more to discuss and debrief that learning exercise.
after each lab exercise we talk about the tasks and lessons learned. i have even learned from the debrief on how to do things differently for some of the tasks. we also talk about how this lab exercise will se us up for the next lab.
I agree, I find that timing is an issue in teh debriefing period of class. You don't want to cut off the exercise too early if there is a breakthrough, how do you balance?
After lab is completed we review each lab station and I ask additional questions to ensure that they have obtained the required material and understand what they have done. Most of the time we require two hours at the minimum to complete a review with some lab reviews going faster as they were building on the lab just before it.
I'm jealous of the time you other facilitators appear to have but I am currently restructuring the class I've taught monthly for the past roughly 18 months to gain debrief or "regurge" time. In nursing, we have the concept of the post conference lasting 30-60 minutes and I intend to try that for starters and not skimp and use existing questions but rather use the suggested type of format for debriefing questions as open-ended questions.
Labs are usually 4 hours (4 different stations) in length, and the debriefing / reviewing time is about 1 to 2 hours in lenth. The debriefing is interactive between student and instructor using a powerpoint reviewing what the students have done in lab and what they learned and what they should have learned. We don't move on unless all are satisfied with each lab station and its learnings.
Our debriefing sessions are done after completing the final lab stations and last anywhere from 30 miutes to 2 hours. I use a power point to review questions on the results of the students experiences and observations in lab.
It is an interactive experience between the students the power point results and my myself. I try to encourage the students to compare their results with one another and ask why they came up with the conclusions they did.
In Fact we go over each days labs by calling on each student to answer as the tasks are brought up in power point. We allow about an hour.
