Overview: Philosophy of Introductory Biology 151/152

Biology 151-152 is a two semester introductory sequence for majors in the biological sciences. Biology 151 addresses concepts in cellular and molecular biology, genetics, evolution and diversity of organisms. Biology 152 addresses plant anatomy and physiology, mammalian anatomy and physiology and ecology. In this sequence emphasis is placed on learning, understanding and being able to use key biological concepts and the scientific method.

The lectures examine key concepts. Discussions allow you to more fully investigate these. In the laboratory, you will use the scientific method and apply a number of the concepts from lecture to carry out various experiments. In addition, labs stress the development of written and oral presentation skills. These are required to successfully communicate scientific concepts and your research findings to others.

As a whole, Biology 151 and 152 are designed to improve students' abilities to think, work and write scientifically. This means that, as best we can, we try to provide the students with real life, open-ended questions to investigate. Such questions generally have no single right answer. In the labs, each experiment provides some information about the question and perhaps more importantly leads the students to additional questions that could be investigated.

Why are we doing this?
In most science classes, the labs follow the lecture material fairly closely. That is, you learn about something in lecture, discuss it in discussion and then do it in lab. This type of lab is meant to complement and support the lecture material. It is also designed to help students learn specific techniques and/or learn how to use specific types of equipment. However, this cook book type of approach tends to do little in the way of developing students' abilities to think, work and write like scientists actually do on a day-to-day basis. Most of what scientists do they do with their heads and not with their hands. Therefore, this lab manual is designed, both to introduce students to common biological tools and techniques, and to expand students= abilities to think, work and write like scientists.

To do this, lab exercises have been designed to mirror real life laboratory problems. The problems presented have no one simple answer and no one mechanism for investigating them. By asking students to work out their own mechanisms to study such problems, we hope that they come to understand that:

Most research problems tend to be complex; in other words, no single experiment is likely to solve them.
The quality of an experiment is determined by how careful the researcher has been in developing methodology and controls, as well as by the quality of his/her data collection, analysis and interpretation.
Research costs both time and money; therefore, not all experiments are designed to be definitive. Some are set up quick and dirty to give us more insight into how the system works or to determine whether various types of research ideas are reasonable.
An experiment cannot prove anything. It can disprove some idea or it can lend support to an idea. Research experiments are most frequently designed to eliminate possibilities.
A good experiment usually raises a number of questions that will lead to further experimentation. Answering these may require help from experts in other fields, e.g. chemistry, physics, statistics.

In the mid 1990's, the major recruiters to university campuses were polled to find out what they looked for in successful candidates for their businesses, professional schools, etc. Their replies surprised many people. They were looking for people who:

Could do math in their heads.
Could work effectively in groups to brainstorm and problem solve.
Had good communication skills, both written and oral
Not only had a broad knowledge base in their major, but who could also apply that knowledge.

The take home message is -- What good is your knowledge if you can't use it? This is the focus and philosophy of all parts of Biology 151 and 152 - lecture, discussion and lab.

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