Development of a new type of student's manual for laboratory work in biology.

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one of the major difficulties in teaching biological sciences at high schools and universities is in the laboratory as the practicability of a subject is severely limited by the availability of biological materials and the equipments, and by the skill and experience of teachers or instructors. To remove some of the difficulties; an attempt was made to develop a software for personal computers by which teachers can edit their own version of student's manuals for the laboratory suitable for their individual needs and circumstances The software we have developed consists of a simple editor, text files divided into small blocks, and programs for statistical analyses including linear and non-linear regressions. Teachers can choose, rearrange and even rewrite the text to construct their own instruction manuals at the level of the operating system (MS-DOS, Japanese version), though much finer reorganization of the text can be made by the aid of word processors such as the WordStar. Using this software, we produced instruction manuals for the following subjects and tested them in the physiology course at the Zoological Institute, University of Tokyo: 1. 'The basis of neurophysiology'; 2. 'Physiology of muscle contraction; 3. 'Cell motilityl. The application was successful in that the time required for the preparation of instruction was significantly shortened and the instruction became much more comprehensive to the students. However, some problems such as the management of figures and illustrations were left to be solved. In addition to these problems, application of the software to the practices in high schools and junior high schools should also be studied further.