Using Student Generated Species Descriptions and Relationships to Test and Refine Understanding of Community Structure
Students in an introductory biology course used pictures of imaginary creatures to construct species descriptions, and then use these imaginary species to build a viable community. Instructors may imp...

Full Record

Using the Rock Anemone, Aiptasia, and Other Selected Cnidarians to View Cnidocytes
Aiptasia and some other easily obtained anemones are used to obtain cnidocytes. One specimen often contains enough tentacles, each containing enough cnidocytes for each pair of students in a sm...

Full Record

Transpiration: An Inquiry-Based Adaptation of a Traditional Cookbook Lab
Here I present an inquiry-based adaptation of a traditional lab to plant teach transpiration, the process that supplies leaf cells with water and dissolved minerals, that cools leaves, and is an impor...

Full Record

A Web-Based Study of Darwin’s Finches
This is a Web-based laboratory exercise based on the research of Peter and Rosemary Grant with the finches on Daphne Major in the Galápagos Islands. A portion of the Grants’ database forms a computer ...

Full Record

Interactions between Photosynthesis and Respiration in an Aquatic Ecosystem
Students measure the results of respiration and photosynthesis separately, combined, and in comparison to a non-living control “ecosystem”. The living ecosystem uses only snails and water plants. Oxyg...

Full Record

Environmental Microbial Ecology
In this exercise, students develop and test a hypothesis about microbial ecology. The hypothesis that students choose must be testable with the “EcoPlate,” a multiwell test plate that allows rapid det...

Full Record

WINK IS FREE SOFTWARE WHICH ALLOWS EASY CREATION OF ANIMATED COMPUTER TUTORIALS
A new, free (!) piece of software from DeBugMode called Wink allows for rapid and easy construction of Flash tutorials demonstrating how to use pretty much any computer application. There is a Windows...

Full Record

Defining the Patuxent River Watershed
The lab is designed to be engaging, using a place students know to introduce them to a concept, and then letting them take the concept and apply it to the watershed I want them to discover. We define ...

Full Record

Teaching Critical Thinking and Writing Skills with CPR
This workshop explores methods of teaching critical thinking and writing skills applied to laboratory reports. It is a challenge to teach these skills to large numbers of students and to teach report ...

Full Record

A Three-Part Laboratory Exercise Using Flightless Fruit Flies (Drosophila melanogaster) to Study Modes of Inheritance
This is an inquiry-based investigation of genetic modes of inheritance using flightless Drosophila as the experimental organism. We present the three-part laboratory writeup, suitable for use a...

Full Record