A Digital Laboratory Manual for Undergraduate Biology
By Stephen Gallik
Traditionally, biology instructors have depended on conventional
laboratory manuals or handouts for dissemination of the protocols, background
information, diagrams, and photographs required to guide students through
bench-top exercises in the teaching laboratory. More and more, however,
instructors are using the Web as an alternative or supplemental source of
instructions and resources for the teaching lab.
Within the confines of the typical
undergraduate natural sciences teaching laboratory, computers are most often
used as components of analytical equipment that control the equipment and
collect data. As extensions of the teaching laboratory, computers are also often
used by students away from the lab bench as personal tools to analyze data and
prepare laboratory reports. And more and more, computers are being used to
access online information that can be used to supplement the laboratory manual.
Too often, however, the various pieces of software or sources of online
information used in these situations are operationally disconnected from the
actual principal laboratory manual that is used to guide students’ basic
laboratory work.
The Digital Laboratory Manual
During the past several
years, I have worked on the development and implementation of a complete, fully
interactive educational tool called a digital laboratory manual (DLM). A DLM is
an online, interactive textbook designed to incorporate all aspects of a
specific set of laboratory exercises into one resource to be used at the lab
bench. A DLM not only guides students through experiments in the laboratory, but
also offers a complete package of all the informational and analytical tools
necessary to complete experiments at the lab bench.
Most of my work in this
area has focused on the development of a DLM for histology (a study of animal
tissue structure), a course that is required for first-year medical students,
first-year veterinary medical students, and first-year dentistry students, and
is frequently offered as an upper-level course in undergraduate biology
programs. The DLM I have produced has gone through three generations of
development.
The first generation was a standard client-based Windows7
application distributed via CD-ROM. The second was a Windows7 application that
contained a customized browser, built from Microsoft Corp.’s WebBrowser
Technology and hard-coded exclusively to access the highly scripted pages of the
manual over the Internet. The third, and current, generation of the DLM is a
public online resource designed to work best with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer
Version 5.0 or higher.
More than Simulation
The purpose of this manual is not to
serve as a simulation; the intent is not to replace the microscope, but to have
the DLM serve as a genuine laboratory manual to guide students through the
microscopic study of tissues. The development of the manual is based on the
premise that histology not only involves identification, but also requires the
ability to examine a specimen under the microscope, understand the quality of
the specimen, and know how to navigate about the specimen in order to evaluate
it.
The DLM consists of fifteen chapters that guide the student through the
microscopic study of all major tissues and organs of the mammalian body. It
includes a library of more than 200 different tissue images, all original to the
manual. Although many fine digital teaching tools for histology have been
developed, and several offer online histology references, I believe this DLM to
be the first of its kind.
The manual has four features that, when combined,
make it unique. First, each chapter contains a comprehensive text that
systematically guides students through the microscopic study of mammalian and
human tissues. Second, fully labeled images, taken at the four magnifications
commonly available on student microscopes, accompany the text. Third, each
chapter contains background information that introduces each organ. And finally,
all of this is brought to the student online.
Implementation Considerations
I have used the DLM as the
sole laboratory manual in my histology course at Mary Washington College over
the past two years. Implementation presented two obvious considerations. First,
each student station in the undergraduate laboratory needed to be wired for
Internet connectivity. Fortunately, the new Jepson Science Center at Mary
Washington College is wired in this way. Second, each student needs a computer.
Because students are not required to bring laptop computers to campus, it was
necessary that the lab be equipped with a computer for each student. Because of
this second requirement, a single lab section of the course was limited to 12
students.
The DLM was delivered via the campus high-speed intranet.
Therefore, use of the manual in class did not depend on general Web traffic or
on the functioning of Internet routers. The pages of the manual were dependably
present on demand. However, use of the manual off-campus was another issue. The
DLM was designed for use in an academic setting with its typical high-speed
Internet connection. Although the manual can be used in any setting connected to
the Internet, its high-content pages will likely take a very long time to load
via standard lower-speed residential connections. We have estimated that
download time with a typical residential dial-up modem would range between 30
seconds to 5 minutes, depending on the page.
DLM Effectiveness
As a teaching tool, the DLM seemed to
do its job well. We found that students were able to cover and comprehend the
material more efficiently using the manual than in the previous years without
the DLM. In fact, they were able to cover and comprehend what was traditionally
an entire laboratory session in about half the time. This being the case,
instructors using the manual should be able to incorporate more activities into
a routine lab period, getting more out of the session. A formal survey of the
students from courses in 2000, 2001, and 2002 backs up these findings. And all
students surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that similar manuals for other
biology courses, such as anatomy, zoology, and botany, would be valuable.
Stephen Gallik, Ph.D., ([email protected]) is an associate
professor of biology at Mary Washington College. Histology: The Digital
Laboratory Manual is available for use online at www.gallik.mwc.edu.
