Abstract

Hands-on learning is beneficial to the animal science industry because it allows students to practice and apply tasks in real-world scenarios, but the activity can be time consuming and expensive. Our objective was to determine student knowledge gained from traditional lecture compared to a hands-on activity completed after the lecture on the same topic. Research was conducted on six different topics from four different classes. For each topic, students (n=130) completed a pre-LEC-test prior to traditional classroom lecture over the topic, then completed a pre-HN-test after a traditional lecture on the topic. The students then participated in a hands-on activity on that topic during a laboratory session and took a post-test after the hands-on activity. Students increased their knowledge from traditional classroom lecture 33.19 ± 4.39 (P<0.0001) and an additional 14.02 ± 4.39 (P=0.0104) after a hands-on laboratory (assessments were on a 100-point scale). Findings indicate that students benefit from hands-on activities and increased their knowledge as a result of the experiential activity beyond that achieved with traditional classroom lecture alone.