Building Bridges
Science Education at Bryn Mawr College

Tri-College Science Teaching Symposium
May 8, 2001
Bryn Mawr College
 
   

 

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Teaching Matters

SCIENCE TEACHING IN THE TRI-COLLEGE COMMUNITY

Quantitative Skills Tutorial

      

Small Group Discussion
Laboratory Structure and Design

Facilitated by Krynn Lukacs, Department of Chemistry, Bryn Mawr College

  • Issues
    • Coordination with lecture (timing, techniques)
    • Helping students understand the value of lab techniques
    • Helping students appreciate that learning lab techniques is, in and of, itself, a desirable thing.

     

  • Initial Lab Experiences:
    • How can students' varied backgrounds be used to make early labs valuable experience

     

  • Lab Structure:
    • Intro--more and/or shorter labs
    • Upper level--project labs, multi-week labs, time for reporting and discussion.
    • One Interesting Model:
      • Week 1: Instructor lectures/lab work
      • Week 2: Student discussion
      • Week 3: more experiments and discussion

       

  • If reports are not required for every experiment, what are some alternatives?
  • Keep notebook, but a formal report is not required
  • Lab practical exam