Special laboratory equipment has been obtained for use in JMU's newly formed College of Integrated Science and Technology. The focus is on the freshman and sophomore years where engaging students in the excitement of science is particularly important. A special effort is being expended to attract more women and minorities into science and science teaching careers. The project addresses the need to develop laboratory facilities in direct support of the curriculum. This is being done with an innovative instructional approach that combines hands-on exercises with specially prepared instructional technology units. The approach promises better instructional quality, accommodates a wide range of student preparation, reduces the need for large multiple station labs, and insures the creation of an integrated laboratory experience that can be adapted and used in other institutions. Fewer student stations are required, because state-of-the-art instructional technology is used to produce demonstrations that are photo-recorded for interactive learning. A multimedia authoring system is used to develop learning modules that familiarizes the student with the experiment, the procedure, and the instrumentation. The result not only enriches the laboratory experience, but it also prepares the student to perform the experiment without constant faculty supervision. Products of the authoring system will be in the form of CD ROMs, video tapes, interactive software packages, and/or presentation packages. The authored experiments may also be disseminated to other schools and for distance learning. The interdisciplinary nature of the program is accomplished through a series of laboratory experiments in environmental science, biology, modern physics, lasers and optics, and automation.
