Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
others' laboratory notebooks and give credit for the assistance. Building upon
prior work and citing it properly are fundamental aspects of science, and it
appears that ONS strongly promotes learning this skill. It appears that the
quality of measurements and sophistication of data analysis methods have
improved every year. One experiment to follow through the years is the
Millikan Oil Drop experiment, where students attempt to measure the value
of the electron's charge,
e
. An example from 2007 is found from Le's primary
notebook entries [181, 182]; another from 2008 is provided by Osinski [183,
184] and one from 2009 is provided by Callow [185-188]. Interestingly,
Callow's work drew some interest from other scientists on a FriendFeed
thread [189] .
This would be an expected outcome of students building upon prior stu-
dents' work. Another positive aspect of ONS in this course is that students can
implement ONS in their future research careers. Some students have already
done so [190]. It is hypothesized that a positive ONS experience in this under-
graduate laboratory course will increase the likelihood of carrying out ONS
in the future, especially after having become a principal investigator who can
dictate laboratory notebook policies. Finally, another positive result has been
the transfer of ONS techniques from the teaching laboratory to the instructor's
research laboratory, for example, use of embedded Google Docs and other
techniques to increase the ease of capturing information in the lab. The posi-
tives appear to have far outweighed the negatives, which are diffi cult to fi nd.
One negative could be that ONS has reduced the effort students need to exert
to get an experiment to work. So, it is plausible that they are developing less
hands-on skills than students who start “from scratch.” Another possible nega-
tive is that students can balk at presenting their work publicly, and their cre-
ativity and performance could suffer signifi cantly. While plausible, the
instructor has not yet detected this outcome. Overall, feedback from students
has been overwhelmingly positive—this comes from direct communication as
well as from anonymous end-of-semester course evaluations.
25.5.4
Future Work and How to Replicate
What is needed for other instructors to carry out ONS in their own courses?
As long as an electronic platform for ONS is available in the laboratories,
extensive planning is not required. In the case study described here, the instruc-
tor simply decided that students should do ONS, provided them with accounts
on OpenWetWare, and set them loose. While somewhat chaotic at fi rst, the
outcome was delightful. If there are resources for planning the course, there
are some things that could be carried out better, especially in terms of assess-
ment. As mentioned above, pre- and posttesting of students are essential to
know with certainty that ONS is impacting desired outcomes. Similarly, mecha-
nisms should be developed to keep track of alumni of these courses in order
to assess whether ONS in the undergraduate teaching lab affected their future
research behaviors or opinions toward ONS or other open-science ideas.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search