2023-24 Xplorlabs Educator Fellow Ethan Schubert shares how students in his high school chemistry classroom blossomed after Xplorlabs was introduced.
December 13, 2024
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“Stop planning, we have everything we need for our class right here.”
That was the call I made to my co-teacher after learning about Xplorlabs for the first time in 2022.
I heard about UL Research Institutes’ Xplorlabs through a contact at the Chattanooga Fire Department in Tennessee who wanted to collaborate on a training at my school with firefighters and my co-teachers. I was surprised at how much of the Xplorlabs content directly related to the standardized content of my chemistry class. In the call I made to my chemistry co-teacher, I explained how this new tool had everything we needed to plan our first unit. Since that day, I have been using Xplorlabs to engage students in culturally relevant scientific phenomena, connecting with their community, and leading the inquiry process.
In our first year implementing Xplorlabs at Brainerd High School, we continued our partnership with the Chattanooga Fire Department allowing students to conduct experiments alongside firefighter mentors. Students in our target group blossomed. Class attendance skyrocketed, personal connections with community members began to form, and students who participated in the intervention group performed at the same level as the honors chemistry sections. Xplorlabs continues to be a highlight of many students’ experiences.
In the Chattanooga science teaching community, we have been wrestling with the problem of phenomena not engaging students in the same way it has in the past. In our curriculum planning, we have carefully selected engaging moments of science that students could interact with meaningfully, provide students with a common entry point, and be explained as they learned. Since 2020, we have seen that the phenomena doesn’t “slap” the way it did before; students are no longer dropping their jaws when they observe chemical compounds as solids, liquids, and gas all at once.
To begin tackling this issue, we expanded the use of Xplorlabs and added to our fire forensic mentorship by exploring the safety hazards facing lithium-ion batteries such as overheating, also known as “thermal runaway,” in our science classrooms. The phenomenon of thermal runaway is when a lithium-ion battery cell has been damaged in a way that leads to a malfunction of the battery management system. The battery then overheats to a point that other battery cells can also overheat and start a fire, potentially leading to an explosion. We also saw an opportunity to give students a chance to explore new careers by partnering with The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s College of Engineering and Computer Science. With UTC professors on-site, we watched real lab footage of a hoverboard catching fire to launch the Xplorlabs Science of Thermal Runaway pathway and my students could not contain themselves and even shared personal experiences of their own hoverboards, their friends’ e-scooter, or a similar video they saw on social media.
Students then asked questions and generated their own wonderings before we could even get to the driving question board.
After this first connection, the professors were impressed at how complex the student-prepared explanations were, and the kinds of questions they asked. Students then got to work, exploring, and connecting classroom content to the hoverboard video. Eventually, students began an engineering design challenge to create a safe protection device for a lithium-ion battery. The level of confidence students began to show in their own abilities was inspiring, and many expressed their excitement to connect with the UTC professors and share their designs.
When implementing both the fire forensics and thermal runaway pathways, students began feeling a sense of belonging and connection to these career professionals that has turned some students toward careers they never saw themselves in before. Some students switched declared majors to engineering, other students switched from no college to applying to our local schools, and a third group applied for jobs at our local Volkswagen plant to work in the new electric vehicle lines.
I also stumbled across a surprising social phenomenon as we used Xplorlabs.
The students’ understanding and learning of the content was demonstrated outside of the lessons as well. I observed one of my students who asked to borrow her friend’s laptop charger. When she got the charger, she noticed it wasn’t the correct wattage and off-brand, and proceeded to inform her friend why her charger was not safe to use. She used evidence from Xplorlabs’ thermal runaway pathway to explain how an off-brand charger with a different battery management system can cause abusive overcharge of her device and damage the laptop’s battery, potentially leading to fires.
I believe student application of learning to their daily lives is the strongest aspect of safety science. Students can make choices and educate others. This type of teaching is the kind that I feel changes the lives of our students for the better. I am encouraged by how much each student is engaging with their community and using their learning to improve that community.
