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Using Web‐based Presentation Modules and Quizzes to Enhance Research‐based Laboratory Exercises for Freshman Bioscience Majors
Author(s) -
Wallert Mark A
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.20.5.a977-c
Subject(s) - presentation (obstetrics) , competence (human resources) , computer science , curriculum , multimedia , mathematics education , pedagogy , psychology , medicine , radiology , social psychology
The first course for majors in the Minnesota State University Moorhead (MSUM) Biosciences Department is Cell Biology. The course is designed to introduce bioscience majors to the research‐based, inquiry‐driven curriculum used throughout the MSUM bioscience programs. In the laboratory, the primary objectives are to introduce students to the process of science, basic scientific instrumentation, maintaining laboratory notebooks, quantitative data collection and analysis, and scientific writing. To help students learn and reinforce basic concepts and techniques a series of Tegrity Weblearner modules have been produced. These modules cover a specific topic, are 10 to 15 minutes in length, and include streaming video, PowerPoint presentation, and links to related materials. The Tegrity modules are combined with a series of quizzes provided in the Desire2Learn (D2L) educational delivery system. Students watch the module and then test their knowledge by taking practice quizzes on that topic. Once the student feels competent with the material, they take a graded quiz. The graded quizzes have specific deadlines and can be taken up to three times. The goal is to allow students to gain competence with concepts ranging from metric conversion and the use of Ranin Pipetman to maintaining laboratory notebooks and the principles of agarose gel electrophoresis. The use of Tegrity modules and D2L has decreased the amount of time used in laboratory to cover basic skills and increased the amount of time available to focus on experimental design, data collection and scientific writing. This work was supported by an NSF‐CCLI DUE 0410630.