Computer-Assisted Instrumentation for Improving Biology Laboratory Instruction

康特拉科斯塔学院的生物科学系旨在为学生提供计算机记录和分析仪器，用于生理学，动物学，植物学，微生物学和普通生物学的实验室。这种工具将扩大和加强我们学生的教育过程，其中许多学生是少数民族和妇女，传统上在科学领域的代表性不足。这些仪器将为学生提供同时测量几种生物功能（如心音、脉搏和心电图）的能力，并存储这些数据以供分析、操作和绘图。这将使该部门能够停止使用活体动物进行实验，并在人体受试者上替代非侵入性技术。这将被证明对许多学生，特别是那些在临床前项目的学生更相关和有趣。所要求的仪器取代了传统肌肉实验中使用的非常旧的生理仪和传感器，并允许新的实验室，例如细胞膜内电位，呼吸（其中体积与速率协调），循环（心音，脉搏，血压和心电图）骨骼肌肌电图测量，以及学生的运动。此外，计算机分析和数据绘图将成为该系所有课程的常规课程。计算机和硬件/软件将是便携式的，并将在整个部门的实验课程中使用，每年为大约1,100名学生服务。使用该仪器的实验将在课程实验手册中公布，并将提供给MacLab手册和教学协会，如人体解剖和生理学会（HAPS）。

The Biological Sciences Department at Contra Costa College seeks to provide our students with computerized recording and analyzing instrumentation for use in the laboratories of Physiology, Zoology, Botany, Microbiology, and General Biology. this instrumentation will expand and enhance the educational process for our students, many of whom are minorities and women and are traditionally underrepresented in the sciences. These instruments will provide students with the ability to measure several biological functions (e.g. heart sounds, pulse, and EKG) simultaneously, and to store this data for analysis, manipulation, and graphing. This will enable the department to cease using live animals for experimentation, and substitute non-invasive techniques on human subjects. This will prove more relevant and interesting to many students, especially those in pre-clinical programs. The requested instruments replace very old physiographs and transducers used in traditional muscle experiments and allow new labs on, for example intracellular membrane potentials, respiration (where volumes are coordinated with rate), circulation (heart sounds, pulse, blood pressure, and EKG) EMG measurements on skeletal muscle, and students on locomotion. Additionally, computer analysis and graphing of data will become routine in all of the department's courses. The computers and hardware/software will be portable and will be employed throughout the department's laboratory courses, serving approximately 1,100 students per year. Experiments using this instrumentation will be published in course laboratory manuals and will be provided to the MacLab manual and to teaching societies such as Human Anatomy and Physiology Society (HAPS).