On the first day of the semester there are a lot of different issues to attend to and students can get overloaded
with information when stepping through them in a serial fashion. It is necessary though to deliver this
information before they can engage in the lab. In my 300 level Cell Biology and Physiology course, two basic
skills are needed before beginning the first exercise which are knowing how to pipette and understand how to
make good notes. Rather than going through these skills individually I have combined them into a single activity.
Students learn to handle P1000 and P200 pipettes by pipetting volumes of colored liquids, but they must figure
out the volumes they need and communicate that information to other groups effectively. Students use colored
stock solutions to create a rainbow and combine this with an exercise on how to make notes and keep a
notebook. This is a group exercise and as a group they have to decide how to write down what they did to
create this rainbow. Then, notes are exchanged between groups and each group tries to replicate what was
done based on these notes. After the exercise a class discussion on how well each group was able to follow the
notes and come up with the same results will emphasize the importance of good note taking as a lab skill.
Intended for freshman ? junior college level, biology majors and non-majors.
Keywords:
University of Maryland (2024)
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