Abstracts are listed in alphabetical order by last name of the corresponding author.
| Student Author(s): | Chad Bender |
| Department(s): | Botany |
| Teaching Mentor(s): | Robert Beckmann | Title of Presentation: | Supplemental Instruction for Biology 181 and 183. Subject: Evolution of the Nervous System |
Many first year college students don't quite understand what it takes to be successful in college. They often underrate the difficulty of college, or they have to learn how to truly study. Biology 181 and 183 are classes often take by underclassmen. In this class they are introduced to a new vocabulary and many new concepts. Because many things are new, students frequently struggle. Biology Lab is often the first time students have been in a laboratory setting. Lab is an excellent way for students to learn classroom related material in a hands on experience. It is important to offer as much assistance as possible during these periods. Developing a program that students may use on their computers is an excellent addition to any out of class learning experience. It is beneficial in many ways, it allows students to work at their own pace. It gives them different way to learn other than reading, and it shows students there are many different hands on ways of learning Through my own experiences, I have found the students often have trouble learning about the nervous system. I have made a CD that gives the history and the evolution of the nervous system. In addition to the history, it will also provide information about the physiology behind the nervous system. This CD will provide students a great way to learn a difficult subject matter outside the classroom. |
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| Student Author(s): | Robert P. Crosby |
| Department(s): | Animal Science |
| Teaching Mentor(s): | Brenda Alston-Mills | Title of Presentation: | Factors Affecting Student Achievement in "Anatomy and Physiology of Domestic Animals" |
The purpose of this project is to find correlation between several academic factors as a means to predict overall success for the student in the course "Anatomy and Physiology of Domestic Animals." Those factors being analyzed will be participation grade, pretesting score, and previous biology courses. These will be compared to the student's overall grade in the class. When and what correlations will be found will therefore be useful in the future for other professors to know what are useful educating techniques to focus on and which ones may not work. |
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| Student Author(s): | Elizabeth M. Hedberg |
| Department(s): | Zoology |
| Teaching Mentor(s): | Nicholas M. Haddad | Title of Presentation: | Animal Behavior in the Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior Laboratory |
Animal Behavior is a difficult subject to teach without live animals to observe. For this reason, I designed and taught a three- hour laboratory for Zoology 260, Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior centered on observations of live lemurs at the Duke University Primate Center (DUPC) where endangered prosimians reside in captivity. The Lab begins with a background section in the laboratory manual enhancing the students' knowledge of lemurs, their importance to research, and conservation efforts. The DUPC staff guide an informational tour covering many species of lemurs, sifaks, and lorises. After the tour, the students are given thirty minutes to observe two to three species of lemurs and complete an ethogram of the behaviors they noted. An ethogram is a list of behaviors and their specific definitions. It is a tool used by researchers to provide uniformity when observing different animals in the same study. Students develop an ethogram, and observe and record behaviors that are important in determining social structures among lemurs. Composing an ethogram gives the students an idea of how an observational study is conducted. This laboratory gives students a better concept of animal behavior in a laboratory curriculum that previously had few behavioral exercises. Using lemurs as an observational subject has the additional advantage of tying directly to other topics in the class in ecology and evolution, giving students a more complete appreciation for our evolutionarily close relatives, and of endangered species that are threatened with extinction. |
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| Student Author(s): | J. Jordan Joyce |
| Department(s): | Animal Science |
| Teaching Mentor(s): | Jeannette Moore | Title of Presentation: | Conquering Animal Nutrition: The result of giving a student perspective and making the class interactive |
Animal Nutrition (ANS 230) is one of the harder classes that a College of Agriculture and Life Sciences student can take. The class is very detailed and many students find it frustrating. I found this class very fascinating and helpful for anyone building a career in agriculture. As a result, I decided to become a teaching assistant in an attempt to make the material easier to learn. I had multiple jobs and helped with all aspects of the class. The first semester, I taught and wrote some of the labs, as well as graded papers and tutored some of the students when they were having difficulty. The second semester I took a more behind the scenes approach, participating as the "Virtual TA". My job was to keep the web page up to date by posting Dr. Moore's lectures every day after class. A big part of my web page consisted of online quizzes that I had created from their class notes and past semester exams. These quizzes were produced through the WebCt program and offered the students immediate feedback on their strengths and weaknesses of their knowledge of the subject. I received lots of positive feedback about the web page and the online quizzes from the students. Many stated that they were very helpful by offering an aid to studying, resulting in higher scores on exams and quizzes. Feedback on my teaching abilities and labs was also very positive. Lots of students said that I helped bring the information down to the level of the student, using simpler ways to look at the material. By being a teaching assistant, I have helped make the Animal Nutrition class less intimidating and easier to understand for the students. I gave a student perspective on the class by teaching some of the labs and tutoring. Along those same lines, the interactive quizzes allowed the students to get more involved in the class and gain confidence in their knowledge. While the students were gaining confidence, I found myself gaining confidence as well by getting over my shyness and speaking in front the class. Also, I finally conquered the Internet with my own web page! |
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| Student Author(s): | Neil A. Menzie and Evonnie R. Gilbert |
| Department(s): | Biological Sciences/Criminology |
| Teaching Mentor(s): | Marianne Niedzlek-Feaver | Title of Presentation: | Multimedia in the Classroom |
Computers have become the most powerful tools for disseminating information and ideas. Naturally, computers have become an important part of the educational system. Participation in the CALS Honors Teaching Program has given us the opportunity to contribute to the computer revolution our public schools are experiencing, by allowing us to help produce components of a multimedia CD which will be distributed to high school biology teachers throughout North Carolina. The objective of ALS 498H was to get familiarized with the video camera, the digital camera, the software which downloads the images onto the computer, and mainly to gather as much footage and images of BIO 125 labs as possible. The objective of ALS 499H has been to edit and piece together the film collected during ALS 498H, and form short educational movies for the CD. One such educational video explains how to operate a microscope and shows the proper way to setup, focus, transport and store a microscope. In addition to working with film, we also used a digital camera and the Quick Time Virtual Reality program to produce a 360-degree view of a microscope. With just a click of the mouse, students can rotate an image of a microscope every 10 degrees, giving them a detailed view of the microscope's components. The product of this project will prove valuable to high school biology teachers and students alike because, both will be given an interesting and interactive glimpse into college biology. Showing high school teachers what college biology students are studying at a major university enables them to tailor their curriculum to better prepare their students for success in college. As opposed to lectures or written class work, an interactive CD provides a more "hands on" means of presenting information, which students will find more beneficial. |
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| Student Author(s): | Jason W. Mullen |
| Department(s): | Botany |
| Teaching Mentor(s): | Robert Beckmann | Title of Presentation: | Undergraduate Teaching Assistant: BIO 181L - The Evolution of the Human Skull and Teeth |
Biology 181 is the first biology class that most students in the Biological Life Sciences major take. With the lecture comes Bio 181L where many freshmen get their first glimpse of a college laboratory. The students are exposed to valuable laboratory skills that are constantly repeated in other labs. Being a teacher's assistant during this laboratory section has shown me the valuable and important impact that this lab has on first year science majors. As an undergraduate teaching assistant, I was involved in discussion, laboratory preparation, and student interactions. The presentation is based on one of the sections that were taught in lab. The section on Evolution gave the students an overview of the principles but did not place emphasis on an example. This presentation uses the evolution of human skulls and teeth in to show how scientists are finding human artifacts and using them to piece together the human evolutionary puzzle. The use of skull pictures during different time periods and a discussion on how this structure evolved would give students a better understanding of evolution. This teaching experience has dramatically improved my communication skills. Student interactions are an excellent way of transferring your knowledge of Biology to younger science majors. Therefore, helping to create a more educated student. |
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| Student Author(s): | Jessica L. Powell |
| Department(s): | Food Science |
| Teaching Mentor(s): | Lynn Turner | Title of Presentation: | The Use of Field Trips as Learning Tool in FS 042 "Quality Control of Food Products" |
The Agricultural Institute offers a two year degree in food science. The course, FS 042 "Quality Control of Food Products", is one of the classes offered in this program. This class teaches students how to provide the best food products for the consumer's money. My goal in being the teacher's assistant for this class was to institute a method for the students to see a real world application of the experiments they were learning about in class. To do this, I organized two field trips to the quality control lab at GoodMark Foods in Garner. During these trips, the students were able to perform two different experiments that the lab technicians perform daily. They did a soxtec fat extraction and a kjeldahl protein analysis. With the ability to see how the industry does their tests the students could compare it to the way it is done in the academic world. With these trips, the students were able to see that in the industrial world time is money. They also saw that the methods taught in school are altered or sped up in away that allows the company to test samples in the least amount of time with the most effective results. In addition to organizing field trips, I also attended labs, wrote lab procedures, demonstrated lab procedures, held test reviews, proctored quizzes and exams and led some lab sessions. Since there were only four students in the class I feel that the field trips were an effective teaching tool since they all got a chance to have some hands-on experience in an industrial setting. |
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| Student Author(s): | Robert P. Crosby, Meredith G. Daves, Amanda L. Guthrie, and Shannon L. Tully |
| Department(s): | Animal Science |
| Teaching Mentor(s): | Sarah Ash | Title of Presentation: | Assessment of Service Learning in Nutrition 419 |
In Nutrition 419: Human Nutrition in Health and Disease, students were given the option of participating in a semester long Service Learning project. Service Learning for this class is going to one of three designated sites and participating in nutrition education programs in place at these sites, allowing the students the opportunity to apply what they have learned in class to real world situations. Students participated in Service Learning for 10 weeks and attended bi-weekly reflection sessions guided by Susan Matthews, a Ph.D. student in the animal science department. During these sessions, the students from the same site gathered to discuss their activities and write Articulated Learnings. Students also completed projects such as nutritional videos for their respective sites. The three sites are Outlook Pointe, which is a private assisted-living facility. The EFNEP (Expanded Foods and Nutrition Education Program) and WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) programs are federally funded nutrition programs that provide vouchers for low-income pregnant women and women with children up to the age of five while providing nutrition classes for the women. Kids' Cafe is an after school program run by the Food Bank and area churches to provide tutoring and nutritious meals to children. Our project focused on surveying the students in the Service Learning about their experience. Questions were emailed to all students in this group and collected and analyzed. The questions assessed many different aspects of the experience. Answers were then compared within each site and between the different sites to determine the positives and negatives of the service learning project for NTR 419. |
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| Student Author(s): | Angela D. Barton |
| Department(s): | Microbiology |
| Teaching Mentor(s): | Gerry Luginbuhl | Title of Presentation: | Detection of Endotoxin: A Student Laboratory Development |
The purpose of the Medical Microbiology Laboratory course is to teach students important laboratory techniques used in clinical laboratories, including techniques useful in production of diagnostic reagents and pharmaceuticals. An important technique that was not covered prior to the fall 2000 semester was testing for the presence of endotoxin. Endotoxin testing is a difficult to perform reliably, but would be a valuable addition to the laboratory. Therefore, in the fall of 1999 I worked in Dr. Luginbuhl's laboratory to adapt an existing protocol to the constraints of the course laboratory. Detailed introductory material as well as materials and procedures sections for the laboratory manual were written. I also developed a "help sheet" for the students using Corel Draw to include detailed, color-coded diagrams and experimental procedures. In the fall semester of 2000 I taught all three laboratory sections on the endotoxin detection exercise that I had developed. I prepared all of the solutions and set up all of the equipment necessary for the exercise. Students' evaluation of the exercise was very positive and Dr. Luginbuhl plans to include this exercise as part of the laboratory from now on. |
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