College biology experiments require experts who make biology relevant to their students. They integrate history, people, and context into their classroom presentations. They have opportunities to teach their classes front-page news.
No college biology student has to learn biology in a vacuum, and even college biology majors should not be expected to make all the connections between what they are studying and the improvement of our daily lives entirely on their own.
The following sections explore how college biology experiments are useful for a student and how Modern Biology Inc. is making it interesting.
Why are College Biology Experiments Necessary?
If you’re wondering whether the practical classes will be worth it, here are a few reasons why college biology experiments can be helpful for you!
Better Grasp of Concepts
With the help of college biology experiments, you can achieve a better understanding of concepts. For example, if you are performing an experiment on antigen-antibody reaction, you’ll understand how antigen-antibody reaction looks within the body.
This experiment will help you understand the importance of blood group compatibility in medical procedures and simple blood donations. It will also help you understand how allergies work!
Helps Develop Practical Skills
Experiments help college students develop practical skills that are necessary to deepen their knowledge.
They do not just become wiser about concepts, but it also helps them develop basic skills that MUST be present for a research career.
Learning Scientific Methods
With the help of college biology experiments, students learn about scientific methods. This is necessary for students of science and helps them become inquisitive and dive deeper into life science.
Develop Critical Analysis
This is a skill that’s crucial for getting to the depth of things – both in life and academically. With the help of college biology experiments, you can develop critical analysis skills that help you see the different points of view and reach a conclusion that’s well-informed.
Boosts Self-esteem
When you engage in experiments, you gain confidence in the subject that helps you feel better about yourself. There’s a significant boost in self-esteem that comes from the confidence in your ability to learn, your intelligence and the curiosity with which you look at the subject.
Gives Rise to Innovation
When you engage in experiments, you find ways to answer questions that are still struggling to find an answer. So many innovations have come from students who were curious and simply performing experiments.
How Can College Biology Experiments & Lessons Be Interesting to Students?
The challenge of teaching introductory college biology is ensuring comprehensive inclusion of scientific content while maintaining intense student interest.
Gifted instructors strategically embed social context into topics that appear multiple times in multiple advanced biology courses and experiments from Modern Biology Inc.
Give them study guides, lesson plans, and test materials to ensure the retention of important facts. This article will give three comprehensive examples of our experiments and corresponding lesson plans for teaching.
Let’s start with an inescapable biology concept: the genome.
College students come to their introductory biology classes with varying degrees of preparation.
Essentially, all students will have some concept of DNA as a long, helical molecule, but they wouldn’t have a clue about how it could be observed.
Students who need a brief remedial lesson can benefit from the addition of the Modern Biology Inc. Properties of DNA unit to their first lab in the week. DNA is the lecture topic.
College instructors seeking to tailor the presentation to quick catch-up on the topic can adapt materials from NGSS, such as their DNA Extraction Lab Lesson Plan. Including their DNA Lab Student Handout and the DNA Lab Teacher Prep Notes. NGSS is a great source of adaptable lesson plans and study notes for basic biology.
Electrophoreses: Meaning and Definition
But no college biology class should stop there.
When your students are ready for a visceral experience of DNA analysis, they should begin with electrophoresis. Students for whom English is a foreign language benefit from study notes for electrophoresis emphasizing vocabulary. Materials available from the Internet that can be read before the lab session can save everyone time.
Loading a well with agarose gel, for instance, is a fundamental lab skill for this experimental activity. Your experiment package from Modern Biology Inc. will include a student manual and an instruction manual.
You can expand your students’ experience of DNA with our complete packages — with labware, reagents, test materials, instructor guide, and student guide with study notes — for:
- Structure, Function, and Isolation of DNA.
- Chromatographic Separation of Proteins.
- Cloning a DNA Segment.
- Restriction Nuclease Mapping of DNA.
- Tissue Printing.
- Characterization of the Satellite DNA from the Meal Worm.
- Introduction to Molecular Biology.
Modern and Basic Principles of Biology: What You Need to Know
Modern Biology Inc. provides you with experiments, not demonstrations. We make sure that the principles of scientific investigation are integrated into every product we sell.
Even college biology students may need to overcome some of their suppositions about basic principles of biology. Students have known since they were children that plants come from seeds. They know that plants make carbohydrates by photosynthesis. But they may not, even in college, have an intuitive grasp of cell division as the way plants grow.
Our experiment’s Effects of Temperature on Cell Respiration gives students a 3-D experience of how germinating seeds that have not yet developed cotyledons consume O2, not CO2. They will use respirometers to measure the consumption of oxygen and the release of diatomic hydrogen by the germinating seed.
Instructors can always refer to the basic curriculum for a pre-college Seed Germination Lab or the Structure and Function of Seeds or The Effects of Light and Heat on the Growth and Development of Plants for students who need extra help, but everything college biology teachers need for this unit is included in the Modern Biology Inc. kit.
Modern Biology Inc. also provides a lab package for the Extraction and Analysis of an Enzyme from Wheat and Characterizations of Peroxidases in Plants.
Social Context Analysis in Biology Teaching: How to Go About It?
Another important task in teaching introductory college biology is providing the social context that illuminates the importance of recent developments in biology.
Consider our experiment on sickle cell anaemia, for example. In this exercise, your student will use agarose electrophoresis to test for variants of the sickle cell gene in samples of their own blood.
This experiment illustrates concepts of genetics, evolution, physiology, and biochemistry that students continuing their study of biology will encounter again and again. It illustrates relationships of genotype and phenotype, balanced polymorphisms, developmental gene regulation, cooperative binding, and protein polymerization.
However, our laboratory exercise on sickle cell anaemia can also be used to teach the social context of biological science. It helps students understand the importance of biology in the real world.
We didn’t choose the topics for your experiment kits randomly. We included selected experiments that not only tie into critical TEM issues but are also endorsed in the literature of science education.
The Bottom Line
Modern Biology Inc. empowers college biology experiments by supporting teachers to integrate an understanding of social context with laboratory experiences
We empower college biology instructors to teach the concepts that their students need to progress in life sciences careers.
More than 500,000 students learn the subject with the help of Modern Biology Inc. products every year. Over 8,000 teachers use Modern Biology Inc.’s experiments and full-length courses. We want to encourage you to give our products a test run. We want to demonstrate why thousands of teachers rely on Modern Biology Inc.
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