Biology 101 Lab Description
Biology 101 lab sessions are 2 hours and 48 minutes each. This allows for approximately 1 hour of recitation, and two hours for the day's lab exercise. Biology 101 lab sections typically have no more than 24 students each. This gives you an opportunity to get to know your fellow students and teaching assistant, and to ask questions in a more intimate setting than lecture presents.
The laboratory exercises presented in Biology 101 have the following general form:
- Cooperative. You will pose and test questions within a group of peers.
- Inquiry-based. Questions will be asked; you will suggest alternative, possible answers.
- Demonstrate the processes of science. You will be given the opportunity to evaluate your possible answers through experimentation and other forms of reasoning.
- Hands-on. The laboratory exercises presented here require you to design your own experiments and manipulate materials – that's science.
- Open-ended. Not all laboratory exercises you design will "work" – that's science.
- Non-memorization. Perhaps the greatest frustration for some students taking this course is that memorization skills honed in some earlier science and related courses do not serve them well here. Science is not memorization.
- Follow a "learning cycle" approach. This approach consists of:
- An initial discovery phase where students working in groups address specific questions, e.g. "How does the environment select for characteristics of organisms?" or "How do molecules move and out of a cell?"
- Development and comparison of initial answers to the original question.
- Term introduction: appropriate vocabulary is introduced as needed to understand the processes and structures revealed.
- Applications. These can include:
- Additional questions addressed in this or subsequent laboratory exercises
- Discussions in "lecture"
A Sample Lab
One of the first labs you will experience in Biology 101 is a lab entitled "How Do We Categorize Living Things?" As part of this lab, you will take a trip to a wooded area on West Campus, where you will have the opportunity to observe and collect a variety of living things. Your challenge will be to collect and describe as many different species as possible, then, using your own knowledge and powers of observation, suggest patterns of relatedness among species and groups of species.
This lab also asks you to consider a variety of issues regarding diversity: What is a species? How do we tell if a group of similarly appearing (or not so similarly appearing) individuals belongs to the same species? How do they know they are the same species? How many species exist? What is the relationship between similar and dissimilar species; is there a relationship at all?
The abundance and diversity of species has impressed and inspired scientists, artists, poets and all major religions. Often, humans see themselves as separate entities, apart from "nature". This lab asks you to take a closer look at the issues above, and to consider your role and the roles of other species, within them.
