Experimental Embryology: a modern approach to investigating the affects of Teratogens on Early Development
Hands-on laboratory experiences are a key component to undergraduate education. To fulfill this need, I have developed an experimental embryology lab course that introduces basic problems in developm...

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Genetics of Arabidopsis thaliana
This lab exercise emphasizes hypothesis testing, as students develop and test hypotheses as to the phenotypic ratios that will occur in F2 generation seedlings resulting from a dihybrid cross of Ar...

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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 s...

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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...

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Training and Mentoring TAs in Inquiry-Based Methods
The success of inquiry-based learning (IBL) in introductory laboratories is largely dependent on how well these labs are facilitated by teaching assistants (TAs). Since TAs generally have not experie...

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Guided Questions: A strategy to promote more effective and independent student experimental design in inquiry labs
Instructors are often challenged by the amount of student-teacher interaction required to guide students in inquiry labs. We investigated whether written inquiry prompts were equally effective in aidi...

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Using motion-detection cameras in a college ecology course
Wildlife experiences are rare in college biology programs due to the lack of facilities for housing animals, concerns about rabies and other animal-borne diseases, and animal welfare issues. For sever...

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Building a polygraph to teach physiology
This exercise is designed to test students’ knowledge of physiograph equipment (here MacLab) at the end of a semester of training. In order to construct a polygraph, the equipment must be set up to ...

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Adapting Laboratory Curricula for Visually-Impaired Students
At West Virginia University (WVU) we have adapted our General Biology lab exercises to accommodate several blind students. Upon reflection, we found that most standard lab exercises have a strong vis...

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The Antibiotic Resistance Phenomenon: Use of Minimal Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) Determination for Inquiry Based Experimentation
The antibiotic resistance phenomenon in bacteria is reported regularly in the popular press and is a well recognized problem. This mini-workshop presents a multi-week module that provides a hands-on o...

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