I would say this is fine for lab work as part of a course. The majority of people have never worked in a laboratory environment before, beside what their school

I would say this is fine for lab work as part of a course. The majority of people have never worked in a laboratory environment before, beside what their school could offer. Precision balances, calipers/micrometers, electronic measuring equipment, fume hoods, etc. Especially chem and bio where you start working with more dangerous reagents and very specialized instruments. Were you able to follow instructions to get the experiment to work? Did you correctly apply what you know about experimental error to get sensible results? Were you able to actually get those steps done in the few hours a week you had? Did you write it up legibly and keep good notes? "Labs" are not research projects. Those come later and are usually also heavily guided. As a mentor you do not want to set a stupid-hard undergraduate project that might not work, unless you really discuss it with the student. It's demoralizing and the majority of the student population only needs to show that they did some original thinking, tried out some hypothises and wrote up the results in a coherent way. Good schools offer extra-curricular/summer programs to push motivated students that are considering research careers.