Skip to main content

You are here

Filters

Search found 8 items

Search

  • Plant ecology students surveying vegetation at Red Hills, CA, spring 2012. From left to right are G.L, F.D, A.M., and R.P. Photo used with permission from all students.

    Out of Your Seat and on Your Feet! An adaptable course-based research project in plant ecology for advanced students

    Learning Objectives
    Students will:
    • Articulate testable hypotheses. (Lab 8, final presentation/paper, in-class exercises)
    • Analyze data to determine the level of support for articulated hypotheses. (Labs 4-7, final presentation/paper)
    • Identify multiple species of plants in the field quickly and accurately. (Labs 2-3, field trip)
    • Measure environmental variables and sample vegetation in the field. (Labs 2-3, field trip)
    • Analyze soil samples using a variety of low-tech lab techniques. (Open labs after field trip)
    • Use multiple statistical techniques to analyze data for patterns. (Labs 4-8, final presentation/paper)
    • Interpret statistical analyses to distinguish between strong and weak interactions in a biological system. (Labs 4-7, final presentation/paper)
    • Develop and present a conference-style presentation in a public forum. (Lab 8, final presentation/paper)
    • Write a publication-ready research paper communicating findings and displaying data. (Lab 8, final presentation/paper)
  • Figure 2. ICB-Students come to class prepared to discuss the text

    An Active Textbook Converts "Vision and Tweak" to Vision and Change
  • Madhumathi S V (2013) This image is license under a Creative Commons Atrribution-Share Alike 4.0 International. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Business_ethics.jpg

    Priority Setting in Public Health: A lesson in ethics and hard choices

    Learning Objectives
    At the end of this unit, students will be able to:
    • Define the central distinction between public health and medicine
    • Apply objectives of public health and individual medical care in a particular situation to identify potential areas of conflict in priority setting
    • Apply moral theories of utilitarianism and deontology to a particular situation to identify the course of action proponents of each theory would see as morally justified
    • Identify the range of morally justifiable actions that might be available to a health professional in a particular setting
    • Choose from among a range of possible actions in a particular health situation and articulate the ethical principles that would justify that choice.
  • Format of a typical course meeting

    Implementing active learning approaches into an upper-division biology course
  • Image of tick from US Department of Agriculture_ARS photo by Scott Bauer

    Mice, Acorns, and Lyme Disease: a Case Study to Teach the Ecology of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

    Learning Objectives
    Students will be able to...
    • outline the life cycle of ticks and explain the transmission cycle of Lyme disease.
    • describe factors that make mice a competent reservoir for Borrelia burgdorferi.
    • analyze and interpret line and bar graphs of data on the effects of changes to ecological communities on the risk of human exposure to Lyme disease.
    • explain how the incidence of Lyme disease is determined by interactions between bacteria, animals, humans and the environment.
    • predict how changes in the ecosystem affect Borrelia burgdorferi transmission.
    • explain how human activities affect biodiversity and the consequences of those actions on disease outbreaks.
  • The MAP Kinase signal transduction pathway

    Cell Signaling Pathways - a Case Study Approach

    Learning Objectives
    • Use knowledge of positive and negative regulation of signaling pathways to predict the outcome of genetic modifications or pharmaceutical manipulation.
    • From phenotypic data, predict whether a mutation is in a coding or a regulatory region of a gene involved in signaling.
    • Use data, combined with knowledge of pathways, to make reasonable predictions about the genetic basis of altered signaling pathways.
    • Interpret and use pathway diagrams.
    • Synthesize information by applying prior knowledge on gene expression when considering congenital syndromes.
  • “The outcome of the Central Dogma is not always intuitive” Variation in gene size does not necessarily correlate with variation in protein size. Here, two related genes differ in length due to a deletion mutation that removes four nucleotides. Many students do not predict that the smaller gene, after transcription and translation, would produce a larger protein.

    Predicting and classifying effects of insertion and deletion mutations on protein coding regions

    Learning Objectives
    Students will be able to:
    • accurately predict effects of frameshift mutations in protein coding regions
    • conduct statistical analysis to compare expected and observed values
    • become familiar with accessing and using DNA sequence databases and analysis tools
  • Students at Century College use gel electrophoresis to analyze PCR samples in order to detect a group of ampicillin-resistance genes.

    Antibiotic Resistance Genes Detection in Environmental Samples

    Learning Objectives
    After completing this laboratory series, students will be able to:
    • apply the scientific method in formulating a hypothesis, designing a controlled experiment using appropriate molecular biology techniques, and analyzing experimental results;
    • conduct a molecular biology experiment and explain the principles behind methodologies, such as accurate use of micropipettes, PCR (polymerase chain reaction), and gel electrophoresis;
    • determine the presence of antibiotic-resistance genes in environmental samples by analyzing PCR products using gel electrophoresis;
    • explain mechanisms of microbial antibiotic resistance;
    • contribute data to the Antibiotic Resistance Genes Network;
    • define and apply key concepts of antibiotic resistance and gene identification via PCR fragment size.