Instructor Guide
This module has two key goals: From a “fundamentals of biology” perspective, this module aims to help students gain an appreciation of genes, homology, and how model organisms can contribute to our understanding of a gene by giving them concrete examples to investigate. From a “scientific practice” perspective, it aims to show them some of the publicly available scientific databases and give them confidence in exploring them to find information about a gene of interest.
Module Components
| Activity | Time |
|---|---|
| Model Organisms Lessons | 30 minutes |
| Database Activity Lecture | 15 minutes |
| Database Lessons | 45 minutes |
| Database Project | 45 minutes |
| Write-up and/or present | flexible |
Teaching Recommendations
This module is designed to be flexible - it can be completed in a single lab period, or the component pieces can be split apart to be used at different times (e.g. at home vs. in-class, or across multiple class days). We have primarily used it as a single lab period, but have also used it as a flipped-classroom activity in a lecture course, assigning portions as homework and completing the Database Project portion in class.
The Example Lab portion of this book demonstrates how we typically organize the material for a single lab period of an introductory biology course.
How to Use this Book
This book is organized into two parts:
- The Example Lab demonstrates how we have used the material as a single lab period of an introductory biology course. The “chapters” of the Example Lab are the instructions that we give to our students, and can be downloaded as
.docxfiles if you want to modify them for your course, or can be assigned directly if you are happy with them as-is. These assignments direct students to work through one or more of the chapters in our Content Collection. - The Content Collection contains standalone readings and activities on specific topics, similar to textbook chapters. In the future we intend to incorporate additional Content chapters covering other model organisms and databases, so that instructors can choose the organisms and databases most relevant to their students.
Customizing Assignments
Each of the assignment chapters in the Example Lab includes a link to a .docx version of the assignment (in the Footnotes) so that you can easily make your own copy and adapt it to your needs.
If you are comfortable with GitHub, you can also fork the repository for this book and modify the R Markdown files.