Restoring Hands-On Learning in Spectroscopy Education

In the past, most of the learning took place in an in-person setting. At scientific conferences, this meant attending a short course during the conference week. Previously, it was common for these courses to fill up with 25 to 30 participants. However, that is no longer the case, as classes are struggling to generate enough interest in them to run. Why has this happened and what can be done to fix it?

The fourth part of a recent panel discussion explores this topic at length. Below is a transcript of that conversation. To watch the video, you can find it at this link or in the literature below.^1,2

Ellen Miseo: Has anybody else got anything to say about the whole training, live courses aspect? I know from my standpoint, Jim was talking about starting to teach short courses a long time before I did, but I know that when I first started to teach live courses at Pittcon, we would have 25 to 30 people and I would have to say, “Nope, can't put any more in the class.” And the last few times we taught it, there was only five to 10 participants. I think that also reflects what Peter talked about earlier about management and spending money and having people not be in the laboratory working. And that's another driver for why we felt SpecAcademy was necessary.

Jeff D’Agostino: I saw a shift when Covid hit and people were pushed out of their offices and working from home, and that also pushed people away from in-person learning. I don't think people have gotten back to that––that they would be into really going to in-person learning again. Of course, with the financial aspects of that, that it does cost money to send somebody and to attend the course. But that's where I saw a big change is pre-Covid to after Covid.

James de Haseth: There's a big difference between learning by listening and learning by doing. The advantage of in-person courses is that you can get people to put hands on or put pencil to paper and actually solve problems. By doing that, they reinforce the learning, and you can explain it on a video. I know we're doing that with SpecAcademy, but I would hope that this could spur people to do things other than just listen because you have to learn things and embed the knowledge to get ahead, and I think that's a loss of in-person classes. Who knows? Maybe we can start going back to some of those.

Jeff D’Agostino: It would be great that from out of this conversation that we would spur the people that watch this panel, that they would be inspired to come to an in-person course that you can actually get hands-on.

Mary Carrabba: And that's one of the things that does historically drive people to in-person classes is the ability to put hands-on, particularly when one has the sandbox type of course with a lot of different instruments for people to actually use.

Ellen Miseo: Yeah, but the problem with that is being able to get the instrument vendors to agree to participate because yes, instruments are getting smaller, and yes, instruments are more easily transportable, but if you're going to run a live course and you're going to have 25 participants, I guarantee you there'll be six or seven different instrument vendors with different software. And although the principles are the same, it's harder for the student to learn unless they've got their box in front of them.

Peter Larkin: I would say that you should expect in person is going to be a superior product to a virtual class, and so you're going to have a higher ceiling, I think, in terms of knowledge you can transfer in person. But with all of that said, going back to the vibrational spectroscopy has been overly successful and is far more utilized for a problem as opposed to by an expert. We need to at least meet those people and make it more accessible to get them started on that journey. And while I would applaud them being sent off and going to courses, I think it's critical that we provide an online venue so that we can try to help them out.

Mary Carrabba: The return on investment with SpecAcademy will be so good because the expense is so low.

Ellen Miseo: And it fits the bill that Jeff was talking about, where they can consume it in small chunks. One of the things that I tried to impress on the instructors as they were recording them is 20 minutes to a half an hour, no bigger, so that somebody can sit and learn one lesson while they're eating lunch, which unfortunately is what industry is pushing people to do.

References

1. Miseo, E. V.; Carrabba, M.; Larkin, P. J.; D’Agostino, J.; de Haseth, J.; Wetzel, W. What is SpecAcademy and What Need Does It Fill? Spectroscopy Online, 2026. https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/view/what-is-specacademy-and-what-need-does-it-fill- (accessed September 28, 2026).
2. Miseo, E. V.; Carrabba, M.; Larkin, P. J.; D’Agostino, J.; de Haseth, J.; Wetzel, W. Making Spectroscopy Training More Accessible. Spectroscopy Online, 2026. https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/view/making-spectroscopy-training-more-accessible (accessed September 30, 2026).