The project improves the quality of the laboratory component of two key courses in our department. The first is the freshman entry-level biology course, which is taken by approximately 250 biology majors each year. The other course is the second semester of the biology sequence taken by students in the Maryland Collaborative for Teacher Preparation (MCTP) track of the Elementary Education Major. The old biology course laboratory consisted of a series of 13 exercises that students carried out in rote fashion. The data obtained were qualitative, rather than quantitative; as a result, students left the course having had no experience with data analysis. The students were not challenged to participate in experimental design; indeed, the lack of equipment precluded the students from designing and carrying out experiments that would provide quantitative data. The pedagogical approach has been quite different in the MCTP class. The students were encouraged to work cooperatively to design experiments and to critically analyze their data. However, one problem remained the same: the students did not have available to them the instrumentation that would allow them to carry out experiments that provide quantitative data or to make the transition to computer-assisted analysis of those data. The new biology laboratory investigates half the number of topics and is inquiry-based. This laboratory provides students with the opportunity to actively participate in the design of experiments, as well as the implementation. Students begin the semester with manual data collection and analysis to establish a firm conceptual basis for the computer-assisted data logging and analysis to be employed during the majority of the investigations. Students present their results orally and prepare a written laboratory report for each exercise. Allowing students the time to design and implement experiments, gather and analyze quantitative data, and present their results and conclusions both orally and in writing p rovides them the opportunity to construct their own models for the phenomena studied. The benefits include modeling the way science is done, promoting critical thinking, fostering collaborative team efforts, improving comprehension of the subject matter, and enhancing writing skills. Four of the topics studied in the biology laboratory are experimentally investigated in the MCTP course. Furthermore, both courses share the same laboratory space and equipment. Thus, the new instrumentation allows the MCTP students to perform experiments of their own design and to learn to use computers to collect and analyze data, thereby fulfilling the potential of this course. *
