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Go to previous page A New Learning Environment in the Biotech Lab Technician Program Go to next page

Creating the Learning Environment

To achieve their goals for student learning Jeanette and her colleagues have designed their courses as learning environments. In these learning environments, the faculty have incorporated the following types of learning activities:

  1. Computer-dependent activities that faculty believe simply would not be possible, or at least not feasible, without computers.

  2. Computer-improved activities that faculty believe work incrementally better with technology but can still be implemented without it.

  3. Computer-independent activities that can be done without technology.

This section provides explanations and illustrations of those activities. It also presents the views of instructors and students, and how they feel these activities have improved student learning.


Computer-dependent learning activities

Protein Purification Simulation Software.
Jeanette Mowery uses
simulation softwarea called Protein Lab in her "Protein Bioseparations" course. The program allows students to simulate the purification of twenty proteins using the same separation techniques that they will use in their future occupations as lab technicians. In this section, we introduce the Protein Lab software and give examples of the ways students can learn from it.

Protein Lab was created by Andrew Booth in the School of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Leeds, England.

The program can be run and the software downloaded (Macintosh or Windows) from its web site. In her computer lab, Jeanette's students choose a protein (1-20) to purify. Although the proteins are not named, they are patterned on actual proteins.b Based on their choice of 1-20,


Students choose protein number.c

the student receives basic information about that protein (in this example, number 8) including pH and temperature stability range.


Information about pH and temperature of protein.

The student then chooses from several pull-down menus: Separation, Electrophoresis, Help. From the Separation menu, techniques such as ammonium sulfate (NH4SO4) precipitation, heat denaturation, gel filtration, ion exchange chromatography, hydrophobic interaction chromatography, preparative isolectric focusing, and affinity chromatography can be chosen.

If, for example, a chromatography technique is chosen for separation, the computer generates a chromatogram of A280 versus fraction number.

From a pull-down menu titled Fractions, the fractions can then be assayed for enzyme activity and selected fractions pooled.

Students can then run one-dimensional and two-dimensional Page gels and immunoblots to assess purity. They do this by selecting from the pull-down menu entitled Electrophoresis.

These are the results of an SDS Page gel.

After gel results, the next separation technique can be chosen. Progress reports are given on yield, enrichment and efficiency (expressed in person hours).


Why does Jeanette use this software?

    Jeanette: Some students could understand the concepts of this class without the computer. But my sense of it is that the simulation is very very helpful, both to emphasize the concept that the purification is a trial and error process that is unique to each protein and to give them an understanding of what the project is before they start the class.

As we can see from her statement above, Jeanette uses the Protein lab for two main reasons:

  1. To emphasize to her students that the optimal strategy for purifying any protein is unique, and will be optimized through their own trial and error.d

  2. To give her students experience with protein purification before they know anything about the process. (Curt Hieggelke, a physics instructor featured on this site, referred to this early familiarization by immersion process as, "filling the blank screen.")

In regards to her first reason, Jeanette told us that there is no uniform way to purify any single protein. According to her, if you try to use the same purification process for every protein, "you'll purify the protein that you purified last time, but you won't get the one you want." The computer simulation facilitates her students' understanding of this process by offering a variety of different proteins for them to purify, and allowing them to perform the entire protein purification process in less than an hour. During the simulation, students are able to experiment, on their own, with various separation techniques and strategies. Jeanette gives an example of how this experimentation works:

    Jeanette: If you pick ammonium sulfate as your separation technique and type in 35%, it will run the technique, come back and say, for example, that you have just precipitated 95% of the target protein and 60% of all other proteins. Without taking the time to do the actual procedure, you've precipitated 95% of the protein. I tell students that in real life we would accept that percentage because we lose a little bit from all the manipulation. But, what's nice about the simulation is that at that point you can go back and say, "I really want to use 50% ammonium sulfate." By changing the level of your ammonium sulfate precipitation, you can experiment to get 100 % of your protein. So, in three clicks of a mouse they have a result.

Jeanette told us that if students were to experiment the same way in the wet lab, she "would have to have a course that lasted forty hours a week, for two years, and would still have a hard time doing it." She told us that, although computer simulations can never replace the invaluable hands-on experience that students gain in the wet lab, Andrew Booth's Protein Lab is very useful in its ability to help students meaningfully understand that the purification process is unique to each protein.

As stated above, Jeanette also uses Protein Lab in an effort give her students a feel for what the protein purification process is like before they actually start doing it. According to her, "There's no way you can give them a lecture on the whole course and then have them do it. Doing simulations that resemble what they will be doing in the lab reinforces what they're about to do."e Her colleague, who has also taught "protein bioseparations," agrees with Jeanette's ideas. He told us that it is impossible to give students a conceptual picture of the techniques involved with protein purification unless they actually work with those techniques.f

Jeanette's students appreciate the software for the same reasons. When asked why they think Jeanette uses the simulation, one student replied.

    Laurel, student: It was a way of visualizing what we were going to do. It was like a learning tool to make us start thinking. I just kept doing different things at random, and eventually I started to figure things out.

To read a more in-depth faculty and student discussion about the ways Protein Lab and other computer-dependent learning activities affect student learning, see Discussion 2.


Computer-independent learning activities

To achieve her goals for student learning, Jeanette and her colleagues use the following computer-independent learning activities.

  • Semester long project: the purification of beta-galactosidase.
    • Progress reports that resemble those they would see on the job in a biotech company.

    • Lab notebooks in which students log their daily progress.

  • Quizzes, tests, homework.

These activities give students the preparation they will need in their future jobs as lab technicians.g For example, Jeanette's students spend the majority of their time throughout the semester in the wet lab where they purify beta-galactosidase. According to Jeanette, the fact that the students work on a project as opposed to a series of individual experiments is itself an imitation of real life experience.h During this project students experiment with protein separation techniques, i use trial and error to find the best combination of these techniques, and run assays and immunoblots j to monitor their progress. While they are working on the project, Jeanette has her students write progress reports, k much like they would have to do in their future jobs.l Jeanette assigns these progress reports twice a semester but also has her students keep lab notebooks where they report their daily progress. The notebooks are common to most courses in which lab work is done, whereas the progress reports are a more formal, real-world summary of their work.

Jeanette also assigns homework that requires students to read about procedures before they come to class, and make flow charts, which are outlines of what they're going to do that day in the lab. These assignments are preparatory and ungraded. Jeanette's quizzes, according to her, "aren't real in-depth" and cover topics such as how certain separation techniques, like ion exchange, work. On her exams she asks technical questions about processes and procedures while also giving students hypothetical lab situations that they must work through. To see the actual quizzes and tests that Jeanette gives, see Resource B.

This real-world training that students receive in both Protein Bioseparations and other courses in the Biotechnology Laboratory Technician Program leads students to the final stage of the Biotech Program; the internship course. As part of this course, students who have demonstrated that they are capable of performing in actual lab settings m start working in Madison area biotech laboratories. The students work as both employees and students, spending 20 hours a week on the job and one hour a week in class discussing what they have been doing at work. Because of the training students receive in this course, Becky Pearlman, who teaches Molecular Biology and other courses in the Biotech program, calls the internship class "one of the big strengths of the Bio-tech program."

To read a more in-depth faculty and student discussion of how Jeanette's computer-independent learning activities prepare students for real-world lab work, see Discussion 3.


Computer Improved Activities

To teach her students DNA fingerprinting, Becky Pearlman, molecular biology instructor, uses an online tool called Trackstar which annotates and organizes web sites around a coherent theme. This organized compilation is called a trackn, and any instructor can build one by assembling web sites in a way that they feel will be most useful to their students. Becky's track on DNA Fingerprinting and Bioinformatics offers her students general information, like the following page entitled "DNA from the beginning."o,

It also offers interactive learning tools. From the following menu, students can select topics that allow them to, among other things, test their skills at determining who is guilty in a murder case, or determining who the parents are in a horse breeding scenario.

Becky's track also allows students to take online quizzes on topics such as paternity testing. The following screen is an illustration of one of these quizzes that allows students to get explanations about why their answer is correct or incorrect.

When integrated together, the web pages that make up this lesson help students get what Becky calls "the big picture of what you're teaching and learn a little bit about how to apply it." Although she wouldn't need technology to teach the same topics, and indeed she continues to also use more traditional teaching approaches like lecture and group presentations, she claims that organizing lessons in Trackstar is superior to lecture because it allows students to take an active part in their own learning.p, In fact, more than anything, Becky emphasized the interactive aspect of her track, saying that it would be a waste of time for students to even use the technology if not for this component.q,

Becky uses TrackStar about twice a semester in Molecular Biology coursesr, to give her student supplementary information about and hands-on experience with the topics she was covering in her class. She says that in some ways TrackStar can replace a lecture. She views it as "an alternative way to transmit information to the students, or better yet, to have them discover it themselves."




a. Booth, A. G.

b. According to Jeanette, the actual names of specific proteins do not need to be included in the simulation. She said that because there exist hundreds of thousands of proteins, because the process for purifying each of these proteins is unique, and because students might encounter any one of these proteins in their future jobs, including the names of the one through twenty that students see in the simulation would be superfluous. Names would not help them conceptualize the trial and error process that is needed to purify any protein.

c. All diagrams of Protein Lab were taken as screen shots from http://www.booth1.demon.co.uk/archive.

d. Jeanette: The process you use to purify any single protein is not something you can apply to every protein on the planet. You can't just use one method. You have to use a series of methods in order to get your protein. And the way you discover what series is best is by trial and error. For example, it might be better to do gel filtration before you do ion exchange. It might be better to do ion exchange before you do gel filtration. And you won't know that unless you try. The most important thing for students to know is that there isn't just one way to do it. And the only way for them to discover the optimum way of doing it is by trial and error. That's the point I'm trying to drive home to the students. And this is how real life works.

e. Jeanette: The fact that you can just generate a chromatogram without having to run a column and pick the fractions gives them familiarity with what they get to in the wet lab.

f. Instructor: Without a picture in their own mind of the equipment and how to manipulate it before they get started, it's just words. I can show all the stuff on the board and it doesn't make any sense to them. After they've done it with their hands, it comes so much faster than when I talk about it. It's a foreign language to talk about something like column chromatography before they've actually done it.

g. To see the actual activities: including progress reports, exams, and quizzes that Jeanette assigns in her class, see Resource B.

h. Jeanette: This is a real-world class because, like lab technicians, they do a project that lasts the whole semester as opposed to something that you can conclude in three hours.

i. The techniques include the same ones students see during their work with the Protein Lab: ammonium sulfate precipitation, heat denaturation, gel filtration, ion exchange chromatography, hydrophobic interaction chromatography, preparative isolectric focusing, and affinity chromatography.

j. See Glossary for definitions of these terms.

k. To see an actual progress report that Jeanette uses, see Resource B.

l. Jeanette: We try to do real world type assignments. Some technicians would be doing very routine tasks and would not have to do that, but we don't teach to that level. We teach to a best practice level and the best practice would be reporting to a supervisor on what they've done on paper and in person. And we make them present that early in the semester. For example, at a company they would probably have to write up a progress report. And there is a standard, scientific format for doing that where you have a goal, and you have your results so far, and you have a plan for how you're going to accomplish the goal. They'd say their goal is to purify beta galactosidase from bacteria. They would say generally in that first paragraph what the methods are: "We're going to use ammonium sulfate precipitation, and ion exchange chromatography and the way we're going to monitor the purification is to use a certain assay." It's like a scientific paper, where you present materials, methods, results, conclusions and discussions. In the results section they'll show the results of their assays. If they're doing ion exchange chromatography, they'll show the results of the enzyme assay, the protein assay. (The progress report that Jeanette assigns to her students appears in Resource B.)

m. Jeanette: If they can pass this class then they're probably ready to do the internship.

n. DNA Fingerprinting is the name of Becky's track.

o. Becky also has other tracks featured on the site which include: Animations of Enzyme Function; Identification of Bacteria Using Ribosomal DNA Analysis (winner of "Top Track Award" by managers of the site); Using Excel to Graph Assay Data; and Using PowerPoint to Make Presentations. All of the tracks can be found at Trackstar.

p. Becky: I really hate having to stand up and lecture them. Some of them get upset because that's how they've always been taught, and they feel we should change it. I feel like the more things I can do where they're actually doing something, the better.

q. Becky: If I'm going take the time to take them up to the lab, check out the classroom, get them all up there, get them to sit down and do something, then I think they should do something interactive, something different from what they usually do.

r. Since we began writing this case study, Becky has accepted a teaching position a Johns Hopkins University where she continues to use Trackstar in many of the same ways she did at MATC.


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