Computerized Data Acquisition for the Physiology Laboratory

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This project strengthens an experimental approach to physiology. Previously, the physiology laboratory has employed equipment and experimental approaches generally developed in the 1960's. Given the computer literacy of today's students and the advances in modern instrumentation, the use of chart recorders and manual calculations for data analysis is both simplistic and outdated. With these approaches, an opportunity to generate student interest in science is lost, and students graduate without being properly prepared to function in a modern research laboratory. To correct this problem, the department is purchasing the MacLab Physiology Recording System from ADInstruments and the MacIntosh computers needed to support the instrumentation. This computer-interfaced instrumentation, with modern data acquisition and analysis programs, provides a new set of teaching tools for animal and human physiology experiments in introductory and upper-level biology courses. The MacLab instrumentation provides the ability to capture data in real-time and quickly analyze the results through menu driven software. The immediate feedback provided by the software enables students to draw conclusions about their work and to ask new questions. Students can then redesign, retest, or extend their experiments during the same laboratory period. This approach should reinforce the idea that investigative work is truly an iterative process and provide an increased degree of student ownership of the experimental work. In addition, the ability to store and retrieve data provides for some new ways of conducting laboratory practicals for the students. The new instrumentation also enables the department to conduct new experiments in respiratory physiology and to expand its ability to study exercise physiology.