Computer-Assisted Instrumentation for Improving Biology Laboratory Instruction

康特拉·科斯塔学院生物科学系致力于为学生提供用于生理学、动物学、植物学、微生物学和普通生物学实验室的计算机化记录和分析仪器。这一工具将扩大和加强我们学生的教育进程，他们中的许多人是少数民族和妇女，在科学界传统上代表不足。这些仪器将使学生能够同时测量几种生物功能(例如心音、脉搏和EKG)，并存储这些数据以供分析、处理和绘图。这将使该部门停止使用活体动物进行实验，并用非侵入性技术替代人类受试者。这将证明对许多学生来说更相关和更有趣，特别是那些临床前课程的学生。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学和换能器，并允许进行新的实验室，例如细胞内膜电位、呼吸(其中体积与速率相协调)、循环(心音、脉搏、血压和EKG)、骨骼肌的EMG测量以及学生的运动。此外，计算机分析和绘制数据图表将成为该系所有课程的常规内容。计算机和硬件/软件将是便携式的，将在整个系的实验室课程中使用，每年为大约1100名学生提供服务。使用这种仪器的实验将在课程实验室手册中公布，并将提供给MacLab手册和教学学会，如人体解剖学和生理学学会(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).