Mini-Grants

Developing web-based tools to promote learning of Cell and Molecular Biology

Joseph Dent (McGill University)

2013 Mini-grant Project

By creating a web based graphical user interface powered with “R” statistical computing we plan to expand the potential for student learning in undergraduate Biology laboratory courses at McGill. This software tool will allow data pooling between the 36 parallel lab sections that occur every week and facilitate student driven statistical inquiry and data evaluation. Our hope is that this will lead to a higher degree of student engagement and foster analytic thinking.

Our SALTISE project is finally getting off the ground after dealing with organizational issues related to the diverse stakeholders. Just to remind you, we are generating web-based software to collect data from individual student experiments in our large introductory Cell and Molecular Biology lab (BIOL-112).

The hope is that by allowing students to enter their data into a common database, where it can then be graphed and analysed, the students will get an intuitive understanding the nature of experimental error and how statistics can be used to draw conclusions in the face of error.

The problems we have encountered are largely organizational. Morgan Boenke, who wrote the proposal, was unable to also lead the project, which was therefore handed off to me at the last minute. Furthermore, starting a dialog between stakeholders (course professors, technical staff, TAs and the programmers), all of whom have other commitments, has been a challenge.

Nevertheless, we should have a consensus on the specific labs and data that will be our priorities at our next meeting and expect to begin programming shortly.

Project Leader

Joe Dent

McGill University, Montreal, QC