Rethinking AP Biology

Good for you! AP biology was the only science class (and I took them all) I hated in high school, as I had previously loved biology but the class was simply scheduled on 'what might be on the test' (repeated every day ad nauseam). As an adult I returned to biology. I had great lecture profs, esp as an undergrad, but I found the labs lacking in similar fashion as you describe. Unlike our good O-chem labs, biology labs were mostly recipes designed to give us a tad of experience following instructions that we could put on a resume. I thought it would have been far better to have the students design and complete only a few experiments, all the way from determining the concentrations of reagents, as this is what is needed to develop the ability to reason in the lab. Later as a TA these ideas were confirmed -- the vast majority of undergrads (esp the pre-meds it seems) had been conditioned to think of labs as a form of speed cooking and nothing else.

Ridahoan of ID 2:57PM January 12, 2012