An Investigative Laboratory to Accompany a New Introductory Mixed-Majors Course

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In response to student need, faculty concerns, and the National Science Education Standards for pre-college education, OSU's life-sciences departments are restructuring their present introductory curriculum and creating a combined majors and non-majors course emphasizing collaboration and inquiry in both lecture and laboratory. This project will provide the equipment to make possible new and revised laboratories involving computer-assisted data collection and group report writing in each laboratory. To allow students time to design, conduct, and report on experiments during lab, we are extending our labs to three hours and creating pre- lab activities for students to conduct in our Learning Resources Center and on the WWW. Students will be presented with "scenarios" in lecture that will introduce concepts in the context of popular issues or current research conducted at OSU and guide students toward questions to be addressed in the laboratory. Students will learn to apply overarching concepts (e.g. surface-to- volume ratio, cost-benefit analysis) in multiple contexts involving different levels of organization and be expected to provide quantitative data to answer problems or test hypotheses. This process will allow students to discover rather than verify concepts. Students will use digital spectrophotometers and a variety of physical and chemical sensors to investigate problems at the cellular, organismal, population and ecosystem levels. Students will create digital-video-logs of investigations and engage in molecular genetics experiments for the first time. Students will share data and information using computer-data and video networks. This project builds on lessons from a previous ILI grant. Approximately 900 students will be affected each semester, including approximately 150 K- 12 education majors. We will examine the impact of this course using test scores, attitude surveys, direct observation of students, and interviews with students and faculty.