"With the Protein Lab software, my students can separate a protein and have a result, in an hour or less. In order to give them that kind of experience in the wet lab, I would have to have a course that lasted forty hours a week, for two years, and I'd still have a hard time doing it."

--Jeanette Mowery, MATC Protein Purification Instructor

What has Jeanette Mowery done in her "Protein Bioseparations Course"?
Jeanette has integrated simulation software, which was developed at Leeds College, UK by Andrew Booth, called Protein Lab into her "Protein Bioseparations" course, a component of the MATC Biotechnology Laboratory Technician Program. This software ^a provides students a virtual laboratory where they can purify 20 different proteins.

Why has she done it?
Although this simulation exercise may seem superfluous in a class like Jeanette's where, for six hours a week, students engage in real-life protein purification in a wet lab, Jeanette told us that it is, in fact, essential. Because her students' only real-life experience with protein purification involves a semester long project with one single protein, she says they need something like Protein Lab to show them that the techniques and strategies they are using apply differently to each protein that they may encounter. The Protein Lab software allows them to do this by providing them a virtual laboratory where they can purify many different proteins, and purify each one in an hour or less.

What goes on in Jeanette's class that doesn't involve technology?
Jeanette's students spend one hour a week in lecture, and about six hours a week in a wet lab engaged in a semester long project, the purification of the protein beta-galactosidase. The course is designed to resemble the lab situations her students will face in their future by structuring the lab work as a project, assigning progress reports, and by assessing students' reliability and interpersonal skills. According to her and her colleagues, this real-life, hands-on work is paramount to assuring students' future success as lab technicians.

What's the result of all this education?
Once students in the Biotechnology Laboratory Technician Program have completed the majority of their course work, they are eligible to participate in an internship course that places them in laboratories throughout the Madison area. There they are able to put all of their college work to the test. And they seem to test well! 100% of students who come out of the Program and desire a job in the field receive one.

Jeanette emphasizes that, once the Protein Lab software came along, she no longer had to rely so much on explaining the big picture to her students. Rather, she could put her students in charge of their own learning. From that point on, their understanding of the big picture more closely approximated their conception of the detailed, daily lab procedures they followed. Because of the balance that Protein Lab brought, and continues to bring to her students' overall experience, Jeanette is confident that those who complete her class will be well-rounded, successful lab technicians.

If you would like to have this kind of confidence in your students, keep reading...