Most of the content for this course is standardized across all lab sections, so I was not responsible for creating these activities. The place where I have the most input into course content is in the introductory lectures that I deliver at the start of each class. Here, I have included samples of three of these lectures, along with the activities from the lab manual that students completed in these weeks.
Lab 1A: Qualitative Observation and Description
In this lab, in addition to reviewing the information in the pre-lab reading, I added a section with some tips about how to sketch specimens in a biology class. This will be useful throughout the semester, when students are asked to sketch what they see under the microscope, and also for sketching birds and plants while on our walking field trip to Corte Madera Creek. I also included a review of answers to some of the activities from the previous week’s lab.
Lab 3: Salt Marsh Ecosystem
This lab features a walking field trip to a stretch of Corte Madera Creek just south of campus. Because of the time we would spend walking to and from the site, I kept the introductory lecture fairly short. However, to make sure that students understood the food web content that had been part of the pre-lab reading, I had informal conversations with students while they were completing the classroom portion of the lab.
This semester, the trip coincided with the construction phase of a large ecological restoration project, spearheaded by the Friends of Corte Madera Creek. I reached out to the woman in charge of the construction, and she offered to meet up with me and my students to give them an overview of the project, which added another dimension to this semester’s trip.
Lab 13: Human Nervous System
One of the last labs of the semester, this one was a lot of fun. Students had the opportunity to do some experiments using their own bodies, and many of them told me that this was their favorite lab of the semester. From my point of view, this lab features some of the most interesting material we cover, especially related to human biology.
