Rebecca M. Reck, Ph.D. Rebecca M. Reck, Ph.D.

I² Lab

Logo of I squared lab including a drawing of a light bulb with half of it replaced with half of a brain. It includes the text "Innovation in Instructional Laboratories: Increasing Impact and Inclusivity."

Innovation in Instructional Laboratories (I² Lab) is a research group led by Dr. Rebecca Reck at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  The goal of the lab is to make instructional laboratories accessible and inclusive spaces for all students, allowing them to learn from hands-on STEM experiences, by creating resources for lab instructors that are informed by rigorous research in all aspects of laboratory course design.

In our current project, we are evaluating the instructional laboratory space, content, and experience for students enrolled in BIOE415 or ECE415.  This work is supported by the Kern Family Foundation.  We also collaborate on other projects, to learn more see the Current Projects list on the right.  Recent publications and updates are highlighted below.

Find us on the Web:

Current Projects

Lab and Design Community of Practice

Accessibility and Inclusion in Undergraduate Labs

Alternative Grading

SPARK

Recent Publications

Tips for Creating a Functional Personal Knowledge Management System in Academia
Publications

Tips for Creating a Functional Personal Knowledge Management System in Academia

I have recently been exploring ways to adopt second brain techniques to manage and organize my research.  At the ASEE 2023 conference, I shared a tips and tricks paper in the NEE division.  The full paper is available in the ASEE...

  • 2023-08-19
Read more
Preparing Women in STEM for Faculty Careers through a Job Search Workshop Series
Publications

Preparing Women in STEM for Faculty Careers through a Job Search Workshop Series

About a year after the pilot of the SPARK program, we reached out to the participants to see how the program prepared them for their academic job search.  We published these results, details of the program, and other feedback at the 2023 ASEE Annual...

  • 2023-08-19
Read more
Adopting Alternative Grading in an Upper-Level Laboratory Course in Bioengineering
Publications

Adopting Alternative Grading in an Upper-Level Laboratory Course in Bioengineering

After successfully switching to specifications grading in BIOE415, I shared my process of how I transitioned to specifications grading in a paper presented at the IEEE Frontiers in Education conference in 2022. The full paper can be found on...

  • 2023-01-05
Read more
Development of a Community of Practice for Rethinking Best Practices in Post-COVID Experiential Learning
Publications

Development of a Community of Practice for Rethinking Best Practices in Post-COVID Experiential Learning

In the spring of 2021, a group of faculty who taught lab and design courses came together to share lessons learned from remote classes.  We found that we could have benefited from a community of practice (CoP) to be able to share ideas and...

  • 2022-08-04
Read more
Converting a Biomedical Instrumentation Lab From In-person to Online
Publications

Converting a Biomedical Instrumentation Lab From In-person to Online

After converting all of the lab experiments in a Biomedical Instrumentation Laboratory (BIOE415) to a kit with an online option, I shared my process for ensuring that students still achieved the important learning objectives.  This paper was...

  • 2021-08-05
Read more

I² Lab Updates

Adding Name Tags During Lab
Blog

Adding Name Tags During Lab

One way to make students feel more welcome in a class is to learn their names.  In large classes or classes that meet infrequently, it can be difficult to learn names.  Some laboratory settings can make that more difficult because you generally...

  • 2024-01-21
Read more
Engineering Unleashed Fellowship: Analyzing Inclusive Course Design in a Lab
Blog

Engineering Unleashed Fellowship: Analyzing Inclusive Course Design in a Lab

In 2023, I was named as an Engineering Unleashed Fellow.  This fellowship is sponsored by the Kern Family Foundation to support engineering educators to allow them to work on an educational project of their own...

  • 2023-10-21
Read more
© Copyright 2026, Dr. Rebecca M. Reck. All Rights Reserved.