![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
What a day.
Apr. 14th, 2009 06:22 pmWell. I think I'm officially exhausted. I had to wake up at 4:30 this morning to finish grading papers, and finished just in the nick of time to walk over to lab and in the door just at the appointed starting time. Hopefully my students will read and appreciate my feedback, for a change. Given their next assignment, I suspect they will. Every once and a while I get hints suggesting that they appreciate my instruction. Shocking.
Anyway, today's lab was two things at once: a refresher course in hypothetico-deductive reasoning, and a chance to run around on A Mountain and measure plant distributions. For part of the refresher course, I used one of my favorite applications of scientific reasoning, that goes as follows:
Once, while in Seattle, I visited Cupcake Royale, and experienced Cupcake Nirvana (aka the best and most delicious cupcake I've ever had). This observation (first step of scientific reasoning!) led me to ask a critically important causal question (second step of scientific reasoning!): WHY was that cupcake so delicious?
I had my classes come up with hypotheses (third step of scientific reasoning!) about why a cupcake might be extremely delicious. My first lab suggested that perhaps it had something to do with the presence of sprinkles, the amount of chocolate, or the love that went into making the cupcake batter. My second lab suggested that it might have something to do with how hungry I was, sprinkles, or the amount of crack in the cupcakes.
The next concept I wanted to discuss beyond hypothesis-development was experimental design (fourth step!), and specifically how to construct a 2x2 factorial design. What this means, in slightly plainer terms, is an experiment designed to test two of the outlined hypotheses at the same time. So in my first lab, we talked about how one would test the hypotheses "amount of lovin'" and "amount of sprinkles" (basically, create combinations (treatment groups )of: lots of lovin' and sprinkles, no lovin' and sprinkles, lovin' and no sprinkles, and no lovin' and no sprinkles). In my second lab, we discussed how one would test the hypotheses "amount of crack" and "amount of sprinkles," in an analogous fashion. From there, the remaining steps of the scientific method involve generating predictions, actually doing an experiment and collecting some results, and then comparing the results to the predictions to determine whether or not a hypothesis or hypotheses are supported. Alas, we did not put crack or lovin' into cupcakes. Oh well.
My favorite part of having these silly conversations is that they really allow my students to focus on the concepts instead of any fancy new biological vocabulary. The big point was to discuss experimental design and hypothetico-deductive reasoning, and by this point in the semester I think my students are finally getting it and understanding how it works. And that's a good thing, to paraphrase Martha Stewart.
So. On to the running all over A Mountain part. Our actual scientific enterprise consisted of measuring plant distributions all across the mountain. I had the usual assortment of students--some absolutely love the chance to go outside and look at real, living things, while others are uncomfortable with the idea of scrambling all over on loose rock, mostly due to inexperience (ahh, these labs are so CRUCIAL to do!). Meanwhile, my biggest job is to run up and down and back and forth to make sure that everyone is doing all right--not breaking any bones, and correctly identifying plants. Generally, it's an exhausting job, but it was made even more so by the fact that a student in another concurrent lab section suffered from severe dehydration and had to be escorted by her TA down to Student Health Services. So I was left to herd twice as many students as usual, effectively doubling my amount of running around. The good news was that nobody suffered any lasting harm. But by now, I'm tired from running around on top of being tired from not getting enough sleep (my own damn fault for not staying on top of my grading, really).
Whew. I also just typed all of this extremely quickly.
Anyway, today's lab was two things at once: a refresher course in hypothetico-deductive reasoning, and a chance to run around on A Mountain and measure plant distributions. For part of the refresher course, I used one of my favorite applications of scientific reasoning, that goes as follows:
Once, while in Seattle, I visited Cupcake Royale, and experienced Cupcake Nirvana (aka the best and most delicious cupcake I've ever had). This observation (first step of scientific reasoning!) led me to ask a critically important causal question (second step of scientific reasoning!): WHY was that cupcake so delicious?
I had my classes come up with hypotheses (third step of scientific reasoning!) about why a cupcake might be extremely delicious. My first lab suggested that perhaps it had something to do with the presence of sprinkles, the amount of chocolate, or the love that went into making the cupcake batter. My second lab suggested that it might have something to do with how hungry I was, sprinkles, or the amount of crack in the cupcakes.
The next concept I wanted to discuss beyond hypothesis-development was experimental design (fourth step!), and specifically how to construct a 2x2 factorial design. What this means, in slightly plainer terms, is an experiment designed to test two of the outlined hypotheses at the same time. So in my first lab, we talked about how one would test the hypotheses "amount of lovin'" and "amount of sprinkles" (basically, create combinations (treatment groups )of: lots of lovin' and sprinkles, no lovin' and sprinkles, lovin' and no sprinkles, and no lovin' and no sprinkles). In my second lab, we discussed how one would test the hypotheses "amount of crack" and "amount of sprinkles," in an analogous fashion. From there, the remaining steps of the scientific method involve generating predictions, actually doing an experiment and collecting some results, and then comparing the results to the predictions to determine whether or not a hypothesis or hypotheses are supported. Alas, we did not put crack or lovin' into cupcakes. Oh well.
My favorite part of having these silly conversations is that they really allow my students to focus on the concepts instead of any fancy new biological vocabulary. The big point was to discuss experimental design and hypothetico-deductive reasoning, and by this point in the semester I think my students are finally getting it and understanding how it works. And that's a good thing, to paraphrase Martha Stewart.
So. On to the running all over A Mountain part. Our actual scientific enterprise consisted of measuring plant distributions all across the mountain. I had the usual assortment of students--some absolutely love the chance to go outside and look at real, living things, while others are uncomfortable with the idea of scrambling all over on loose rock, mostly due to inexperience (ahh, these labs are so CRUCIAL to do!). Meanwhile, my biggest job is to run up and down and back and forth to make sure that everyone is doing all right--not breaking any bones, and correctly identifying plants. Generally, it's an exhausting job, but it was made even more so by the fact that a student in another concurrent lab section suffered from severe dehydration and had to be escorted by her TA down to Student Health Services. So I was left to herd twice as many students as usual, effectively doubling my amount of running around. The good news was that nobody suffered any lasting harm. But by now, I'm tired from running around on top of being tired from not getting enough sleep (my own damn fault for not staying on top of my grading, really).
Whew. I also just typed all of this extremely quickly.
