How to Get Students to Stop Asking, "Is This Lab Going to Take the Whole Three Hours?: A Description of a Cell Biology Lab Curriculum Which Emphasizes Scientific Inquiry

 

Tested Studies in Laboratory Teaching, 1997, Volume 18

Abstract

In this presentation I described the transformation of our cell biology laboratory curriculum to make it more focused on experimentation and inquiry. The three most relevant features of this (ongoing) project are: 1. I have configured the course into modules so that some new labs can be introduced each year (and others retired) without necessarily altering course objectives substantially. 2. The lab program is in the process of shifting to the almost exclusive use of microbial eukaryotes. This approach has a lot of advantages. 3. The project was funded, in part, by a National Science Foundation Instrumentation and Laboratory Improvement (NSF-ILI) grant. The process of writing the grant helped me to make the course better than it otherwise would have been. I had not anticipated this outcome.

Keywords:  cell biology

Boston University (1996)