Tools for Learning BiologyShow Video Details ↓ [music] … … … …Janice Lapsansky: [music] [music] [music] … … In addition to providing the information especially in a lecture format, the laboratory setting is one where we've taken a great deal of effort into giving students a real experience of what it's like to be a biologist. So everything from using the tools of biologists to observe things from the microscopic level to the macroscopic, to the ecosystem level. So they've spent some time in labs using those tools, they go out in the field and use those tools. Umm, they collect data, they analyze data. So they get repeated practice, again, the practice of biology as a scientific process. We continue that throughout the quarter, so it's building a set of experiences that prepares them for that final lab exercise in bio-ethics. Umm, another thing that they practice, writing in biology, using the terminology in biology. Especially focusing on asking questions and creating analogies so that once they leave the fairly well structured setting of the biology 101 class, they can still talk about biology using every day language because they've practiced using analogies, translating, if you will, biology language to, again, that everyday language that they use and can communicate with other students, at least their peers that aren't in biology 101. So, they're doing everything that biologists do: Observing, collecting data, analyzing that data, communicating and bio-ethics, considering those questions in biology is a part of that process that every biologist does. So as much as possible, a very real experience. Putting... Allowing those students to step into the shoes of a biologist, practice those skills. [silence] Finally, I think one of our goals in the biology lab is that students recognize that scientists and biologists in particular, while they spend a good portion or their lives, their professional lives, in inquiry, looking at life, and asking and answering questions about living things, they still share with all the rest of the world the very similar experiences. And biologists are just as concerned as everyone else about bio-ethical issues in their everyday lives. We want to choose food that's healthy for us. We want to have access to the latest medical technologies. We want to make sure that those things are available to not only us but our family members. We want to have access to natural areas, we want to preserve biodiversity. These are concerns that everyone shares and it's not just the realm of biologists. And biology 101 students, as members of the voting public, need to be welcomed and encouraged to participate in those kind of decisions. [silence] |