This three year institution-wide project aims to increase both the ability of students to use, evaluate, and value scientific results and methods and also the mathematical and statistical sophistication of their scientific analysis and inquiry. A group of more than twenty science faculty members at Mount Holyoke propose to do this by review and revision of laboratories in most introductory and core science courses. The aim will be to construct laboratories which not only teach technique, but which 1) develop students' ability to ask interesting, testable questions which give insight into the phenomena under study, and 2) underscore and enhance students' ability to use formal reasoning, mathematics and statistics to draw inferences from testable hypotheses.
In addition to revising labs, the project will support the effort to build students' sophistication by changing parts of first and second year mathematics and statistics courses to use the new labs as contexts and sources of examples, and by maximizing points of contact between labs in different science courses.
