Instructional Technology

One of the main thrusts of my scholarly activity is the development of instructional technology for the undergraduate biology curriculum, especially for the undergraduate biology teaching lab. I am active in the development of on-line tools that can be used by students and instructors in the classroom and teaching lab. Most of my work involves the development of tools I call On-line Laboratory Manuals (OLMs).

I have developed two OLMs. The first was an OLM for Histology, the first version of which was developed in 1995 for CD, entitled Histology. The Digital Laboratory Manual. The second version of the manual, developed for the web in 1999, continues to depend on relatively old code compatible with a Internet Explorer operating in a Microsoft Windows environment. I am currently working on version 3, which is a Flash application compatible with virtually any popular browser operating on ant popular operating system.

My second OLM has been developed for the laboratory portion of my Cell Biology course. Entitled CellBiologyOLM, this Flash application compatible with virtually any popular browser operating on ant popular operating system. It was used for the first time in the Fall 2007 semester.

I am also developing a OLM for my Proteins course. It is very early in its design.

I have put together suite that will eventually serve as a gateway to all the manuals

Another area of my work is the employment of blogs to serve as on-line laboratory notebooks for undergraduate students. I, along with my colleagues in the Department of Instructional Technology, have put together a site called Lablog, a compendium of student e-notebooks. These e-notebooks are programatically linked to the OLMs