Mini Workshops were 45-minute sessions presented on Friday, 25 June 2010 on topics ranging from wet lab techniques to discussions on pedagogical research and practice. View the abstracts below, listed chronologically by presentation time.
Session I: 8:30am – 9:20am
From goat’s milk to protein structure: an inquiry-based case study on antithrombin III
(Isabelle Barrette-Ng)
Students are often excited to hear in the news about how recombinant proteins are being used as new treatments for diseases, but paradoxically they are less excited to memorize the endless details of complex protein purification procedures and minutiae of protein structure that are commonly presented in introductory biochemistry courses. Most students only appreciate the value and relevance of understanding protein purification and protein structure after they learn more about different aspects of biochemistry and can see for themselves the central importance of these basic concepts. To overcome this pedagogical challenge, I have developed a case study to help students better appreciate the centrality and relevance of protein purification and protein structure within a biochemical microcosm. The case study explores how basic concepts of protein purification and protein structure are intertwined with the function and practical applications of recombinant antithrombin III produced in goat’s milk. The workshop will allow participants to work through an interactive and inquiry-based computer-based laboratory exercise that is similar to the full version of the case study presented to the ~500 students in an introductory biochemistry course taught at the second-year undergraduate level. Following the interactive portion of the workshop, I will discuss my experience with practically implementing this case study in a large, introductory biochemistry course and look forward to discussing with workshop participants the strengths and limitations of this case study.
Human Microsatellite DNA: Population Genetics and Forensic Application
(Kuei-Chiu Chen)
As forensic DNA lab topics have become popular in high schools, colleges and universities, offering a professional-level forensic DNA lab still faces technical and financial challenges. In this study we attempt to overcome these issues in order to teach students concepts and techniques in molecular biology, population genetics, and mathematics typically encountered in a professional forensic DNA laboratory. We choose ten of the 13 FBI designated microsatellite markers from its Combined DNA Index System. These markers, also known as short tandem repeats (STRs) in the forensic community, are DNA sequences comprised of tetra-nucleotide repeat units and are located at various sites on human chromosomes. In addition to STR markers, we also use the amelogenin locus to identify the gender of sample donors. In this mini workshop we will simulate a simple DNA extraction procedure followed by a PCR and discuss hypothetical results. Participants calculate the random match probability from 10 loci based on Hardy- Weinberg equilibrium principle. We will further discuss a few forensic scenarios such as paternity determination and deduction of individual genetic profiles from a mixture sample contributed by two or more donors.
Bioethics Debate and Case Studies in the Teaching Laboratory
(Susan J. Karcher)
The cloning of human stem cells; a new prenatal diagnostic method; the safety of genetically modified foods. These are just a few of the topics that are considered by students in a sophomore level genetics and molecular biology laboratory class at Purdue University. Students research a bioethics topic of interest and prepare case studies to debate the topic. Presenting bioethics in the biology laboratory can be important to help show students the applications and significance of the laboratory exercises they do. The bioethics cases stimulate the students interest in this area and help students develop their critical thinking skills. In this miniworkshop, we will present how bioethics topics and case studies to debate are developed in this class. Participants will receive a list of current topics, recent references on the topics, and case studies. Participants will play the role of college sophomores and will debate some of the sample case studies. We will also discuss the experiences of participants who have presented bioethics in their classes.
Simple mold making techniques for the creation of teaching specimens
(Hans Lemke)
It is preferable to use authentic specimens for teaching demonstrations or lab activities, but such materials are often fragile, rare, prohibitively expensive or, sometimes, purely imaginary. Though there are many commercial models available, these are often very expensive or do not suit the needs of a particular laboratory exercise. Casting models using silicone molds and polyester resins allows for the creation of customized models for your classroom. With a little practice, you can create models that are as good as (or better than) those that you can buy. Originals can be either natural objects or models of your own creation. The casting materials used are fast curing, durable and relatively inexpensive, making them ideal for the creation of numerous identical teaching sets. This workshop will cover basic materials and techniques for making original models, preparation of natural objects for molding, and casting using both one and two piece molds. I will demonstrate the casting process and participants in this mini-workshop will have the opportunity to make a cast. In addition, I will discuss how we use casts of fossil shark teeth and models of caminalcules in our phylogenetic reconstruction lab exercises.
Throwing the Dice: Teaching the Hemocytometer
(Sarah Salm and Jessica Goldstein)
One of the concepts taught to our science students is the use of the hemocytometer. Students in Microbiology, Genetics, and Anatomy and Physiology classes use the hemocytometer in a variety of activities, from quantifying yeast cells to counting white blood cells. Students do not always understand that cells on a hemocytometer are in a three-dimensional volume. While they clearly see on the slide a two-dimensional square with measurable length and width, they do not perceive that use of the cover slip adds height, the third dimension. They also do not always grasp the concept that the number of cells counted on the hemocytometer represents only a fraction of the total number of cells in a milliliter and that the number determined by counting on the hemocytometer can be used to estimate the final cell count in a larger volume. In this workshop we will present a short lab activity in which students use dice and rulers to understand the hemocytometer. We will then present an activity in which students apply their new-found knowledge of the hemacytometer to quantify the number of chloroplasts and thus the amount of chlorophyll in spinach leaves.
Dino-Eye in conjunction with Image J to …
(Hélène d’Entremont)
Dino-Eye is a digital eyepiece that fits in the tube portion of the ocular of a microscope and has a USB port to connect to your computer. It allows you to view the image of your specimen on your computer and capture still images, real time or time-lapsed views as well. We will capture images from prepared slides and edit, analyze, measure, calibrate, and manipulate them using ImageJ. ImageJ is an open source image processing program that supports Windows, MAC and Linux and various image formats, and of course, it is free! If time permits, additional open source programs will be introduced to allow ABLE members to share opinions, feedback and personal evaluations of discussed programs and introduce members to new ones.
Session II: 9:30am – 10:20am
A truly inquiry-based bioinformatics exercise incorporated into a newly developed molecular biology laboratory course
(Liane Chen and Kathryn G. Zeiler)
BIOL 341 (Techniques in Molecular Biology) is a third year laboratory course being developed for the University of British Columbia. It is expected to have a large computer-based component, and must handle large enrolments. We are developing a written assignment that will introduce students to bioinformatics tools, in the context of scientific inquiry. Students conduct research on genes of unknown function, possibly linked to materials used in the wet-lab portion of the course, or to genomics research carried out by faculty members. The NCBI databases are used to analyze nucleotide and protein sequences, search for genes with similar sequences, and identify conserved domains and structures. Hypotheses about the structure and function of their unknown gene product (protein) are generated, supported by further research on conserved domains and homologous genes. Findings are written up as a research proposal designed to test and characterize the gene products. Because poorly characterized genes are used, students cannot conduct literature searches on the genes themselves to find previously published results. Thus, students must focus on the scientific process and synthesize new ideas from their bioinformatics data, and have the opportunity to add to the knowledge base. Additionally, this assignment provides the students with further practice in using scientific literature and should improve their technical writing skills. This project is currently being tested with Directed Studies (BIOL 448) students. Early outcomes will be discussed, and further suggestions are welcomed.
PLANTS-DON’T JUST SIT THERE, DO SOMETHING!!!
(Marsha Fanning and Karen McDougal )
We’ve all done the basic plant labs where students look at flowers, seeds, and fruits. But how often have you actually shown students the “neat things” that are more hidden from view-the things they hear about but rarely see? In this workshop we will show you how to prepare simple setups to view pollen tube germination, to see endosperm and early embryos of dicots, and to make preparations of mitosis in broad beans.
High- and Low-Tech Approaches to Teaching Statistical Skills in Introductory Biology
(Gillian Gass)
Students from a wide range of academic programs (science, arts, engineering, nursing, kinesiology, and so on) take Introductory Biology at Dalhousie University. We want to make sure that all of our students can benefit from the class, while also making sure that they are properly prepared for upper-year biology classes. Introducing students to basic statistical techniques important in biology, such as the chi-squared test and comparing means using 95% confidence intervals, presents a challenge: how can we teach these skills to students from a broad range of backgrounds, while keeping the focus on biological (rather than purely statistical) concepts during class time? During this workshop, I’ll share some hi-tech and low-tech solutions to this issue. Making use of technologies such as Camtasia Studio software and tablet PCs, I produced short pre-lab videos that students could watch on the course website to help them prepare for using statistical techniques in their lab exercises; during the lab, students could also consult a short stats-skills document included in the lab manual. We’ll also look at how these videos, documents and exercises can be adapted for use in online courses. Workshop participants will have the opportunity to try out some of the tools used for making the videos, and to share their perspectives and ideas for successful integration of statistical techniques in biology labs and classrooms.
Accommodation Solutions Online: Resources for Teaching Students with Disabilities in Lecture and Lab
(Christy Horn, William Glider, Nate Cogswell, and Amin Makkawy)
Accommodation Solutions Online (ASO) is a web-based tool providing teaching faculty and staff technical assistance in accommodating students with disabilities in higher education. This technical assistance will be in the form of information about various disabilities and how they impact a student’s learning, guidance about how to provide accommodations for the classroom such as raised line drawings or facilitating a group discussion with a student with communication challenges, video case studies of outstanding faculty demonstrating best practices for classroom accommodation, and examples illustrating how a particular functional characteristic impacts the student and her/his ability to participate in the educational environment. In this presentation, we will be demonstrating the ASO prototype and requesting advice and input from ABLE members on the design and usability of a module for developing materials for teaching students with visual impairments photosynthesis in laboratory and lecture. This will include some of the technologies easily obtainable such as Smart Pens, raised line drawings, Braille labelers, bar codes with audio output, and audible measuring tools.
‘Should Jack and Jill Go Off The Pill?’: Application of an Interrupted Case Study to Facilitate Student Learning
(Lori Ann Rose and Kathy Zoghby)
In large introductory biology courses designed for non-majors, it is difficult to stimulate student interest in important core topics such as genetics. This mini-workshop is based on an actual case of a couple with a family history of Fragile-X-Syndrome. The workshop is designed to engage students by role play in which the students actively portray the couple during their discussion on starting a family. Students are divided into groups of five or six to facilitate peer discussion and instruction. During the discussion, information is presented in an interrupted case study format and students are asked to generate a list of questions to be exchanged between the worried couple and a genetics counselor. Students will be given relevant family histories and asked to construct and evaluate a family pedigree for Fragile-X-Syndrome. Based on their data, discussion, and interpretation each group of students will formulate a recommended course of action for the couple. The groups will then present their recommendations to the class via directed discussion. This method is well suited for laboratory courses where students can be sorted into learning teams. This format encourages problem solving, group discussion, and peer teaching while providing the instructor with opportunities to interact both with the groups and individual students. By using the small group and interrupted case study methods, instructors can monitor student progress, provide immediate feedback and direction during individual group discussion, and simultaneously check the progress and logic of the groups’ reasoning.
Session III: 11:30am – 12:10pm
Floral Attraction: a model for combining teaching and research
(Amy E. Boyd)
This workshop discusses a novel way of combining undergraduate teaching and ongoing field research. Especially at small colleges, the demands of teaching can be overwhelming and make it very difficult to maintain a quality research program in one’s field. I developed a research-based course as part of an NSF ecology grant proposal, as a way to include outreach in the proposal but also as a way to continue with my teaching while participating in a major research project in my field. The course allowed a small group of students to participate in many aspects of the research, including literature review, methods development, fieldwork and lab work, data analysis, and presentation of results. Student evaluations suggest that what they learned and gained in the course was invaluable, and they strongly encouraged the development of similar courses. Teaching the course gave me the time and flexibility I needed to be able to do my research while providing students with a valuable experience in doing the science of ecology. In the workshop, I will present the design and outcomes of the course, and then we will discuss as a group how similar courses might be developed.
Using 3D water models to investigate fundamental and powerful concepts in the biological sciences
(Nora Egan Demers)
Nosich defines fundamental and powerful concepts as those basic concepts that lie at the heart of a discipline (Nosich, 2005) When challenged to consider what such a concept might be in the natural sciences, water and its chemical properties emerges. I believe that students who demonstrate a strong understanding of the chemical bonding properties of water will perform better and understand more fully other important processes in the natural and biological sciences. To that end, we have incorporated activities using magnetic models of water (available from Milwaukee School of Engineering’s (MSOE) Center for BioMolecular modeling) into activities in General Biology I classes at Florida Gulf Coast University. These models contain magnets that are used to help demonstrate the polarity of the molecule, and thereby provide an opportunity to build ice crystals, model cohesion and adhesion, and observe the solubility properties of water. We assessed students’ ability to recall these chemical properties at several intervals in that class, and in upper division Biology courses. During this workshop participants will be able to work with the models, be exposed to the worksheet and hear about the assessment and results from our work at FGCU.
Extending the Traditional Laboratory in Polygenic Analysis (Total Ridge Finger Count) to teach Data Presentation, Statistical Analyses using Three Sizes of Data Sets
(Rosemary Ford)
Thirty years after Mendenhall, Mertens, and Hendrix (1989) introduced the laboratory “Fingerprint ridge count: a polygenic trait useful for classroom instruction,” it is still a standard in teaching principles of quantitative inheritance, and a number of modifications have appeared in the literature since that time. The advantages of using this lab are obvious since the trait has a high hereditability and the time required for obtaining fingerprints and then characterizing their pattern types and determining the ridge counts is short. The remainder of the laboratory time can be devoted to graphing and analyzing the data and to investigating the literature for supportive and related studies. For this lab, I use data from the current class and past class data including theirs, and the summary statistics from Holt’s original data (1961). Students use Microsoft Excel to prepare histograms in the same style as Holt, so they learn how to control variables connected with histogram preparation in Microsoft Excel, to use the data analysis package of Excel for the unpaired t-test with similar variances to compare males and females in the two class populations, and to use a web-based t-test for comparing class data to Holt’s data. Students also evaluate their original hypothesis and discover information linked to total ridge count by looking at articles using twin studies, racial group comparisons, and individuals with chromosomal/ gender disorders, and the processes influences ridge development.
Once a loser always a loser? Using crayfish to teach behavioral endocrinology
(Anna Goldina, Tanya M. Simms, and Thomas Pitzer)
Using live animals to address questions about evolutionary and proximate mechanisms of behavior is often avoided in high-enrollment introductory biology labs because of the difficulties involved in maintaining a large animal colony. However, by working with live animals students can understand the relationship between behavior and the endocrine mechanisms that drive it. We present a behavioral endocrinology lab using live crayfish to examine aggressive behavior and the role of serotonin in the maintenance of a “loser effect,” i.e. the likelihood that an individual that has lost an aggressive encounter in the past will be defeated in future confrontations. The students aim to determine whether serotonin can reverse the loser effect by comparing aggressive interactions of crayfish before and after the losers have been injected with serotonin. During the course of the lab students learn how to handle animals, observe and score behavior, and generate an ethogram based on their observations. While multiple hormones are involved in aggression, we chose to use serotonin based on primary literature showing its role in aggression and establishment of social status. Additionally, serotonin is fast acting and it is present in invertebrate and vertebrate species. Because serotonin is an evolutionarily conserved hormone, it is easy to draw the connection between its effect on crayfish behavior and its role in human behavior. Based on the content knowledge of student body and the focus of the course, this lab can be easily modified to incorporate a variety of discussion topics of varying complexity levels.
There’s an App for That: Utilizing iPod Touch Applications for College Level Biology Instruction
(Marilee A. Ramesh, Rachel Collins, Dorothy Belle Poli, Christopher S. Lassiter, and Mark Poore)
The Roanoke Touch Project was initiated for the 2009-2010 Academic Year at Roanoke College. This program was a result of a grant from Arthur Vining Davis to Information Technology with the purpose of expanding the use of technology in teaching. The grant supplied each of the 35 faculty participants with an iPod Touch. Each faculty member was tasked with identifying those applications that could be used in the classroom. In addition, they were asked to search for ways the iPod Touch could be used for productivity purposes, such as email, scheduling, etc. Four members of the Biology Department, a molecular geneticist, an ecologist, a plant biologist and a developmental biologist, participated in this project. As a group, we decided to combine our exploration of biology-related iPod Touch applications. We developed a central database to list those applications that we have identified along with our evaluation of their usefulness to teach biology. This resource is intended to be accessible to our students and our colleagues, serving as a resource for other biologists who may want to use this technology in teaching. Some specific examples of applications that have been utilized in the classroom will be presented.
Population Demography of Developed and Developing Countries
(Teresa Weglarz)
The larger the global population size the more resources required to support the population, and the greater the ecological impact. Global population size is currently 6.8 billion and growing at 1.2% with estimates of 8-10 billion people by 2050. Economic factors can influence population growth. Countries with less developed economies tend to have higher population growth rates compared to countries that are more developed economically. Social, political, and cultural factors may also influence population growth. An examination of population demographic data provides a glimpse in to the population characteristics that are associated with population growth. The U.S. Census Bureau hosts the International Data Base (IDB) website that students use to examine population demographics for different countries. The IDB provides population pyramids, and data on infant mortality rates, fertility rates, and life expectancy of populations in over 200 countries. Students investigate the role of population and ecological impact in four parts. Students examine population demographic data of the three most populous countries in part one. In part two, students compare demographic data of developed versus developing countries. In parts three and four, students calculate their personal ecological footprint and then propose a plan to address local environmental impact.
Session IV: 2:00pm – 2:50pm
Part I: Using foraging behavior of fruit flies to introduce undergraduates to research
(Jimena Aracena)
This mini-workshop will introduce foraging behavior of fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) as an ideal area of research for undergraduates in both beginning and advanced biology courses. Exposing undergraduates to research can be expensive and often requires a background in science that excludes many beginning biology students. Working with fruit fly foraging and feeding behavior is very inexpensive and convenient. It also requires only a basic background in biology, making it an ideal tool to give the students a research experience early in college. The questions that can be asked using the methods taught in this mini-workshop are very varied and include ecology, behavior, physiology, genetics, and evolution. The types of experiments also lend themselves to formulate clear hypotheses and predictions and to learn various types of statistical tests. Instructors can use these experiments as stand-alone experiments in various biology courses (beginning, ecology, genetics, physiology, behavior, entomology) or to start long-term research projects.
Using Classical Genetics Simulator (CGS) to teach students the basics of genetic research
(Jean Heitz and Ben Adamczyk)
In large introductory biology classes some labs are difficult to do as wet labs, e.g. classical Mendelian genetics investigations. As a result, we have turned to cyber labs. Working with our introductory biology program, Ben Adamczyk developed a Classical Genetics Simulator (CGS) which gives students the opportunity to perform test crosses with model organisms much like a geneticist would do in a modern laboratory. In this session we demonstrate how we use the CGS program to help students learn the basics of genetics research. The lab activity states: “You are a geneticist and have just returned from the Hawaiian Islands. On a remote island you collected specimens from different populations of fruit flies that are endemic (found only on this island). The genotypes of the individual fruit flies and the mode of inheritance of their phenotypic traits are not known. You need to do controlled crosses in order to determine whether the phenotypes are genetically determined. If the traits are genetic, you also need to determine the mode of inheritance (sex-linked, autosomal, etc.).” Using CGS, the instructor sets the parameters for the populations that the students investigate, such as the number and type of traits in a population, the modes of inheritance, trait linkage, etc. The program doesn’t “solve the problem”. Students can’t play it like a video game and expect it to give away any answers. Rather, CGS requires students to understand what they are doing, why they are doing and how they should do it.
Teaching and Technology: Web Meetings for Laboratory Education
(Robert C. Hodson and Todd Nickle)
There can be occasions when biology laboratory staff and students need to collaborate outside of a laboratory session. For example, a student does not understand how to use a spreadsheet program to construct a graph or perform statistical analysis of their data and instruction requires real time observation of steps taken with the software. Or, some students need to collaborate on writing a laboratory investigation work plan or a group report and it is not convenient or possible to meet in person. A web (virtual) meeting service can aid instruction and collaboration in these and other similar situations. A candidate is the relatively new service called Dimdim (www.dimdim.com). This service has various levels with one free for meetings up to 20 participants. Anyone can create and host a meeting. If only audio and webcam video are needed then the service only requires one of several possible web browsers. Any participant’s computer screen can be shown to all others if the presenter installs a small (~2 MB) free plugin. In addition to computer screen sharing there is whiteboard, documents, and web page sharing. This workshop with explore the web meeting service and its limitations by running an actual meeting with participants. We will also compare Dimdim to Skype and other web communication applications.
Using Mammal Study Skins to Investigate the Relationship Between Surface Area to Volume Ratio and Mass
(William V. Glider)
This exercise is part of a three hour lab dealing with measurement and data collection in the biological sciences including characteristics of measurement data, sources of variability measurement data, sampling from a population and the use of descriptive statistics. In many biological investigations, measurement data are often collected to determine if there is a relationship between two or more variables. In this exercise students estimate the surface area and volume of a small and medium sized Nebraska mammal. From these data the students determine if there is a relationship between the service area to volume ratio (SA/V) and size (mass) of the mammal.. The mammal study skins (“stuffed mammals”) used in this exercise are part of a teaching collection prepared by students in Vertebrate Zoology classes. The surface area and volume measurements of the mammals is estimated using the geometric formulas for cones (head) and cylinders (trunk). The wet weight (mass) of each mammal is recorded on the original specimen tag. The data collected from this exercise also can be used to initiate discussions of a variety of concepts including: correlation vs. cause and effect, why cells are small, the importance of mitochondrial cristae, metabolic rates, hibernation, torpor, and bird migration, Reference books to local mammals are used by students to write a brief summary of the characteristics (e.g., range, habitat, diet, size range) of the mammals which they used to collect the surface area and volume data. This lab exercise has been used in both majors and non-majors introductory biology courses employing both traditional and investigative approaches.
The Detective Approach to Teaching Buffering
(Robert J. Kosinski and C. Kaighn Morlok)
Buffering is very important to living systems, but it is often misunderstood by students. In particular, they often don’t understand the concept that a buffer contains a component that buffers against acid and another component that buffers against base. This laboratory has two exercises. In one, students identify “mystery” solutions as either distilled water, monobasic phosphate only, dibasic phosphate only, or combined phosphate buffer. The solutions are titrated with both acid and base. If there is no buffering, hydrogen or hydroxide ion concentration increases linearly and at a much faster rate than when there is buffering. A plot of hydrogen ion or hydroxide ion concentrations (rather than pH) vs. the number of mL added makes the identities of the solutions obvious. In the other exercise, the students titrate complete phosphate buffer solutions that have been doctored by other students by the addition of a secret amount of either acid or base. Again, plotting hydrogen or hydroxide concentrations as the titration proceeds quickly reveals whether acid or base was added and how much. Calculations and plotting are done by a downloadable spreadsheet. The fact that students are solving “mysteries” set up by other students increases interest and engagement.
Multiweek projects for the biology lab
(Joy Perry)
Students can deepen their learning through projects that span a significant portion of a semester and that integrate multiple concepts and ways of learning. This mini workshop will present examples of semester-long projects, including service learning projects, from biology courses at UW Fox Valley. We will also discuss potential barriers to such projects and possible solutions, and brainstorm ideas for multiweek projects in participants’ courses.
Session V: 3:00pm – 3:50pm
Part II: Using foraging behavior of fruit flies to introduce undergraduates to research
(Jimena Aracena)
This mini-workshop will introduce foraging behavior of fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) as an ideal area of research for undergraduates in both beginning and advanced biology courses. Exposing undergraduates to research can be expensive and often requires a background in science that excludes many beginning biology students. Working with fruit fly foraging and feeding behavior is very inexpensive and convenient. It also requires only a basic background in biology, making it an ideal tool to give the students a research experience early in college. The questions that can be asked using the methods taught in this mini-workshop are very varied and include ecology, behavior, physiology, genetics, and evolution. The types of experiments also lend themselves to formulate clear hypotheses and predictions and to learn various types of statistical tests. Instructors can use these experiments as stand-alone experiments in various biology courses (beginning, ecology, genetics, physiology, behavior, entomology) or to start long-term research projects.
Biology Without Borders: An Integrative Strategy for Increasing Conceptual Resonance among Biology Majors
(Bryan M. Dewsbury, Marcy K. Lowenstein, and Adam Rosenblatt)
An effective biology program requires that students learn the core biology material, be proficient in other subjects (such as calculus and statistics) and develop related skills (laboratory and critical thinking), for a holistic understanding of biological concepts. Conventional biology departments typically require courses like calculus and/or statistics for their majors but tend to treat such courses as separate entities, with minimal focus on the connections between them. We present here a pedagogical paradigm called ‘The Teaching Pentagon’. The Teaching Pentagon eliminates the artificial endpoint that tends to be placed after biology, and biology-related classes. Biology major courses can be developed in lockstep with other ‘supporting’ classes, thus increasing the resonance of the subject within the students. This synchronized-syllabi approach increases efficacy of the teaching process by maintaining open lines among instructors of the courses that constitute the pentagon, and maximizes student engagement. The end result is immediate contextualization of the material so that the information is understood and integrated into a scaffold of knowledge and not merely regurgitated on examinations. This mechanism is malleable, and ‘supporting’ classes are determined by the needs of the ‘principal’ biology class. We use as an example in this presentation, General Biology II, a typical second-semester entry level course for biology majors.
Curriculum Development as Professional Development: A Model for Adjunct and Graduate Student Instructors Teaching Multi-section Lab courses
(Janet Vigna, Jen Cymbola, and Jodi DeNuyl)
Instructors for our multiple section non-majors biology lab course are primarily adjuncts and graduate students. While some of them have been teaching lab sections for years, most of them are fairly new to teaching and have never had training in effecting teaching pedagogy or curriculum development. While the feedback they provide related to “how the labs are going” each semester is invaluable, instructors have not been directly included in curriculum revision. This disconnect between curriculum development and curriculum implementation has negatively influenced teaching effectiveness in the course. In an effort to improve teaching performance and instructor retention, we created a model for curriculum development that provides not just training, but professional development for these instructors. Participants in the curriculum development workshops worked on the revision of lab exercises after engaging in literature review of biology content and effective pedagogical strategies. Participation in the process of curriculum development has empowered and motivated instructors to teach lab sections more effectively, as they have taken ownership of the material and pedagogical approaches they are using in the classroom. During this mini-workshop, we will explore the model we’ve developed for our instructors and engage in an evolution lab activity revised by curriculum development participants.
Testing Hypotheses in the Winter World: A Semester-Long Temperature Monitoring Project for a Non-Majors Ecology Course
(Scott R. Smedley)
Beyond highlighting an excursion into hypothesis testing by non-majors, this mini workshop provides participants with hands-on experience with temperature loggers, a tool with broad instructional application. In a non-science majors course on winter ecology, students embarked on a semester-long project, following an introduction to the physical aspects of the winter environment. During a field session, student teams each identified two microhabitats in close spatial proximity (e.g., opposite sides of a large tree trunk; above and beneath a fallen log). They next hypothesized whether or not the thermal environment would differ between the microhabitats and then planted a temperature logger in each microhabitat, which recorded at 0.5 h intervals for over 75 days. Upon retrieving the temperature loggers, the students downloaded the data to test their original hypothesis. When I taught this course for the first time, it was apparent that these non-science majors found this quantitative project rather daunting. Consequently, to prepare the students to analyze their actual temperature data, I developed two instructional modules that took place prior to data retrieval. These modules utilized a dataset relevant to the course – population measurements for local overwintering bald eagles. The first module focused on the basics of spreadsheet use and effective graphical representation of data, while the second dealt with a simple statistical approach to hypothesis testing employing confidence intervals. At the close of the semester, each team reported to the class on the results of their hypothesis test.
Thinking in three dimensions: An exploration of analytical methods for optical sections from confocal microscopy using ImageJ
(Michael J. Keller)
The microscope has long been a key piece of equipment for life science research, and as such has remained a prominent component of the introductory biology teaching lab. In modern research laboratories, fluorescence microscopy has become the dominant technology, supplanting brightfield microscopy for many applications. At the same time, the confocal microscope has gained prominence in fluorescent microscopy because it can dramatically increase image clarity and can be used to optically section thick tissues and generate image data in three dimensions. This, together with the development of powerful image analysis software, has largely removed old limitations on three-dimensional analysis of microscopic images. This lab exercise uses the open source analysis package ImageJ to explore the analysis and representation of fluorescent images in two- and three-dimensions using confocal image stacks. Students are led through a series of exercises manipulating two-color stacks in various ways and are ask to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each method in relation to the task of accurately counting cells in a volume of tissue. Manipulations by students include merging color stacks, making a two-dimensional image montage, generating a two-dimensional z-projection of a three-dimensional stack, and rotating stacks in three dimensions. The goal of this lab is not to master ImageJ, but to get them thinking about cells and tissues in three dimensions and better understand the nature and limitations of microscopic sections.