Most instructors know it within the first ten minutes of a science lab session. There's a moment when it becomes clear that some portion of the class isn't quite ready for what's in front of them. Maybe they are uninterested. Maybe they lack confidence. Or, maybe they are underprepared in other ways that could cost everyone something: time, safety, or the learning experience itself.

Student readiness gaps are one of the most commonly cited frustrations among STEM educators. They're also some of the most normalized; treated as an inevitable feature of diverse incoming cohorts rather than a solvable structural problem.

These gaps are not inevitable. And, the first step to solving them is recognizing what they look like in practice. Here are four of the clearest signals that your students are coming to the in-person lab without all the preparation they need.

1. The First 20 Minutes Are Spent Re-Teaching Fundamentals

If sessions are routinely opened by reviewing how to use a micropipette, re-explaining serial dilutions, or walking students through safety protocols that were covered in lecture, that's a readiness signal, not a normal warm-up.

In-person lab time is expensive. It's scheduled, space-constrained, instructor-intensive, and irreplaceable as a learning environment. When foundational review regularly consumes the opening of a session, it's a sign that the preparation happening before the lab isn't sufficient to get students to the starting line.

The in-person lab should be where students apply and deepen understanding, not where they first encounter the basics. When it's functioning as the latter, something upstream needs to change.

Why it matters: Every minute spent re-teaching fundamentals in the physical lab is a minute not spent on the higher-order tasks that make lab experiences genuinely educational.

2. There Are More Procedural Errors Than Conceptual Ones

There's a meaningful difference between a student who makes a mistake because they're wrestling with a difficult concept and a student who makes a mistake because they didn't know which end of the pipette to use. The first kind of error is productive; it's part of learning. The second kind sounds like a readiness problem.

When lab instructors report a high incidence of procedural errors, such as contaminated samples, incorrect equipment use, or protocol missteps that are not connected to the scientific question at hand, it's a sign that students haven't had enough practice with the physical mechanics of lab work before arriving. They're learning both procedure and concept simultaneously, which overwhelms them and increases the likelihood of errors.

The understanding of procedures should be achieved before the physical lab experience takes place. Otherwise, safety risks increase, materials get wasted, and the cognitive load on students makes it harder to engage meaningfully with the science.

Why it matters: Procedural errors in the in-person lab are inefficient and they introduce a safety risk and a signal that students needed more practice before they arrived.

3. Participation Is Uneven in Predictable Ways

Take a look at who's actively engaging in your lab sections and who's hanging back. You might pick up on challenges that track with prior academic background.

Uneven participation in lab settings is often attributed to personality or confidence, but it's frequently rooted in something more concrete: some students simply have had more exposure to lab environments and equipment than others. A first-year student who has never held a micropipette before is going to hesitate in a way that a student with two years of lab experience won't.

When the gap in participation is predictable by demographic or academic background, it's a sign that lab readiness inequities exist and should be leveled.

Why it matters: When pre-lab preparation is inconsistent, in-person labs can widen existing gaps rather than close them. Standardized readiness preparation is one of the most direct tools institutions have to level the starting point.

4. Pre-Lab Anxiety Is Showing Up as Attrition

This one is harder to see in a single lab session, but it shows up clearly in course-level and program-level data. If your introductory STEM lab courses have higher-than-expected drop rates in the first three to four weeks — particularly among students who are otherwise doing well in the lecture component — pre-lab anxiety may be a contributing factor.

Students who feel underprepared for lab work often experience it as a source of significant stress, particularly in courses where lab performance contributes to their grade. That anxiety can translate into avoidance, and avoidance in a required lab course quickly becomes a withdrawal. It's not that these students can't do science. It's that they never got the preparation they needed to feel capable of doing it.

Research consistently shows that self-confidence in lab settings is a strong predictor of persistence. Students who feel ready engage. Students who feel underprepared disengage, and often leave.

Why it matters: Pre-lab anxiety isn't a personality problem; it's a preparation problem. And it has measurable consequences for retention and completion rates.

What to Do About It

If any of these signs feel familiar to you, the structural solution is clear: build more meaningful preparation into your course design before students arrive at the in-person lab. Move beyond pre-lab quizzes and safety lectures, which only really test recall, toward immersive, practice-based experiences that build procedural fluency, foundational understanding, and confidence in a zero-risk environment.

The STEM programs making an impact on STEM retention and persistence are getting the most out of in-person lab time. They're using virtual simulation to make this happen consistently at scale, across diverse cohorts, without overburdening instructors or adding seat time.

The in-person lab experience is too valuable to spend on preparation that could happen before students walk in. Explore how Labster virtual labs help institutions build that preparation.

Questions about how other institutions are solving the student readiness challenge? We'd love to talk.