Course Objectives and Assessment

You cannot find the solution until you first identify the problem.

Have you seen examples of the book series titled "The Idiot's Guide to [blank] " or "[blank] for Dummies?" You can fill in the blank with almost any subject now, such as "Stock Investing for Dummies" or "The Idiot's guide to Music Theory." I am inexperienced in many fields, including the fields described in the titles, but I am neither a dummy nor an idiot. Neither are you. We always have a diverse group of students in this course, with varying levels of experience in such areas as laboratory math, data analysis, technical writing, and so on.

This introductory level course is designed for sophomore level students who are highly talented academically and who are well prepared for challenging work. Our plan is to introduce, reinforce, apply, and/or polish up your fundamental skills in several major areas. We focus heavily on writing, recordkeeping, quantitative, and analytical skills, comprising a fairly broad subset of the twenty learning objectives that have been established by the laboratory coordinators in natural sciences and engineeering at Rice. As you look over the program objectives and performance standards please consider which areas represent your strengths, in which areas you want to strengthen your skills, and in which areas you have little or no experience. Remember, our goals extend far beyond merely learning some laboratory techniques or earning course credit and a grade. What you take with you after you complete the course is what counts.

Program objectives

Your skills should continue to improve as you progress toward graduation. To help you (and us) assess your progress we have selected twenty learning objectives in five general categories, established competency standards, and developed a self evaluation survey (campus access only). The objectives, standards, and survey are shared among several departments in natural sciences and engineering.

[Program objectives] [Performance standards]

[Pre-lab self evaluation] [Post-lab self evaluation]

Upon completion of this introductory laboratory course we hope that most students will reach level 4 (demonstrated ability to follow explicit instructions), with outstanding students reaching level 3 (demonstrated abillity to apply prior knowledge to familiar problems) in most areas. Demonstrating the ability means doing it consistently, not just once. Of course, how far you go in a specific skill area really depends in part on your level of experience coming into the course.

Below is a summary of areas within each skills category that we emphasize in this course.

Basic laboratory skills

In this category we will address all six specific objectives by providing resources and having you apply the skills to specific assignments. Built into the prelab assignments, research papers, and final exam are assessments for your ability to measure and report uncertain quantities with appropriate precision, convert raw data to a physically meaningful form, and apply appropriate methods of analysis to raw data. The ability to carry out common laboratory procedures correctly, to work safely in the laboratory, and to troubleshoot laboratory procedures will be assessed as part of your performance score

We refer to the basic laboratory skills as abilities, however to some extent perhaps we should call them habits instead. If we gave you an exam, for example, and identified it as testing your ability to report uncertain quantities with appropriate precision, nearly all of you would "ace" it. On the other hand, without such notification most of you will overstate precision at least once and some of you will do so most of the time. Simply being able to do something puts you at level 4 of our proficiency scale, with three levels to go. Applying it consistently without reminder puts you at level 2 or 3. Extending such experience on your own initiative puts you at level 1.

Communication and record keeping

Because the ability to write effectively is such a critical skill, we place a heavy emphasis on writing research papers. Technical writing is a disciplined form of communication, involving skills that are applicable to a broad range of fields. Another major assignment related to communications skills is to keep an accurate and comprehensive laboratory notebook. You will have to articulate questions and respond to questions in lab and/or lectures, however oral communication will not be specifically assessed, nor will the ability to use the library and other information sources.

Maturity and responsibility

No specific assignment has been designed to assess maturity and responsibility. However, the extent to which you follow up on instructor feedback, prepare for lecture and laboratory sessions, and maintain lines of communication reflects on these qualities. They say that high school was about teaching, while college is about learning. You are expected to play a major role in seeking knowledge and experience for yourselves, taking the initiative rather than expecting a teacher to tell you exactly what to do (see the section on the policies page about asking questions). You are also expected to do your share to ensure that lines of communication stay open (policies: communications section).

Context

Know the purpose of each laboratory investigation and how the scientific method applies. A very good indicator of a student's awareness of the significance of a study is what information he/she includes among the reported results. Students who are well aware of the context of a study will recognize which data are relevant to the objectives of an investigation and kinds of information that are either irrelevant or were used only to obtain a meaningful result. For example, if you investigate a plane crash your final report might well include the pattern of debris that was scattered in a field. You would not list the names of all of the people who searched the field, though. When you fractionate tissue (take it apart) you will report how much protein you obtained in each fraction. You don't report the arbitrary volumes of sample you took or the absorbance values you measured in order to determine amounts of protein. Think about and report what is relevant and useful.

Integration and application of knowledge/experience

Our worst enemy in education is compartmentalization. Compartmentalization refers to "learning" material in a course solely for the purpose of doing well on the exams or other course assignments, then forgetting it all. For example, introductory biology is a course prerequisite, yet some students each semester refer to protists as bacteria, rats as mice, or plasma as containing dissolved hemoglobin. You aren't expected to remember minute details, but you are expected to retain general principles.

"Laboratory math" seldom requires anything more than simple algebra. Granted, some of you are uncomfortable with mathematics at any level, and will have to work hard on the quantitative assignments in this course. If you are fairly good at math you shouldn't have trouble with solutions/dilutions, units, rounding numbers, summarizing/converting raw data, etc. Prelab assignments, laboratory performance, research papers, and the final exam will all provide you with opportunities to apply mathematical skills to relatively uncomplicated problems.

It is important that you examine your final results to ensure that they make sense. For example, if you declare in one part of a paper that you had a grand total of 35 micrograms of protein, then in another part you claim to have prepared a volume of sample containing 200 micrograms protein, something clearly isn't right. Practice estimating quantitites. We run into trouble when we rely heavily on formulas for making calculations and neglect todouble check the results against some reasonable estimate.