Our Laboratory Teaching
Our outstanding new £40 million Collaborative Teaching Laboratory represents a significant investment by the University of Birmingham in the School of Chemistry. It has been designed to provide our undergraduate students with access to the very latest equipment and technologies and has enhanced our ability to deliver an exciting and engaging practical chemistry course.
Technology-enhanced Learning
A state-of-the-art audio-visual system allows lecturers to interact in real-time with students on an individual basis to provide guidance, advice and feedback. Technology is also on-hand to assist students in preparing for their lab work through short theory and technique videos and interactive quizzes. The majority of the first and second year assessment is undertaken online using tools that provide instantaneous feedback enabling students to link their feedback directly to their performance.
Access to the Latest Equipment
We’ve invested over £2.5 million pounds in providing our student with access to state-of-the-art laboratory equipment, making our labs better equipped than the majority of research environments in both academia and industry. The lab course has been carefully adapted to incorporate this new instrumentation to provide students with fast and effective feedback on the success of their experiments.
Innovative Lab Course
Since the CTL opened in 2018, we have continually striven to improve the way we use the facility to teach the key scientific and transferrable skills a chemistry graduate needs before embarking on their career. The first two years of teaching build a foundation, focusing on laboratory techniques after which the final years focus on the development of project skills.
- In your first year you will benefit greatly from a non-assessed first semester which allow you to gain confidence and competence in the lab.
- In the second year of lab work, you begin to explore advanced techniques linked to research being carried out in the School of Chemistry.
- In your third year, you will undertake week-long mini-projects using the knowledge and skills you learn to embark on new areas of research, finding your own solutions and developing your own approaches to lab work.
- Year 4 (MSci). For students choosing our MSci courses, the final year includes a major research project, chosen by the student favourite area of chemistry and based in our research labs; in effect our students become a PhD student during their final year and many have had their research published and their name appearing in a scientific journal! Students beginning their course in 2021 will have the added benefit of their project based in our new Chemistry building which is due open in 2023.