Build Better Students by Having Them Build It Themselves

Ann Yezerski
Kings College, Wilkes-Barre, PA
annyezerski@kings.edu

We’ve all been there. We are flipping through a catalog looking for the device that will complete our cool new lab and when we find it, we think, “They want how much for that thing? I could build it myself!” And sometimes we do. We cut glass, solder, duct tape, and even make reagents ourselves rather than succumbing to a pre-made expensive manufactured contraption or kit. Did you ever stop to think how much more you know about the technique if you have to develop it, and fix it, yourself?

I certainly didn’t…even when I was in grad school crawling on the floor looking for a dropped ruby ball from a recently dismembered HPLC pump, wondering if the “3-second rule” applied to analytical chemistry instruments as it did to my toddlers’ spilled goldfish crackers. Out of necessity, I fixed and rebuilt that thing so much that I started to think I could almost be a chemist. I hadn’t had an analytical chemistry course and I certainly couldn’t calculate theoretical plates (don’t know what that is? I’m not exactly sure either.) But, you know what? I can run that machine. I can figure out protocols and troubleshoot when they need tweaking, and I can collect good data.

I didn’t realize how important those skills were until much, much later. We are accustomed to handing out “recipes” for laboratory exercises and are proud when our students get the expected results. However, one day near the end of a semester of instructing students in Physiology using a very nice computerized physiograph system, I wondered how much the students really knew about the system and how much was simply following an organized list of instructions and pressing “START.” They had spent the semester watching muscles twitch, measuring mice breathing and scoffing as the unfortunate “volunteers” completed their deep knee bends, but did they understand how this whole system worked? Did they know what all those wires were for or why they turned the knobby thing when the trace flatlined?

There is one way to find out. Make them do it. That is why the last lab of the semester in Physiology is the creation of a lie detector. Everyone has heard of a polygraph and most have seen the archaic strip chart recorder pens twitching reassuringly as the murderer tries to cover his crime on TV. A polygraph is really a physiograph measuring several physiological events at once, including heart rate, respiratory rate, blood volume and a sweating response such as Galvanic Skin Response (GSR). My students had done each of these things throughout the semester as individual labs with their system. Now it was time to put them all together and demonstrate the abilities (or inabilities) of a polygraph and the students’ abilities as physiologists. Left with a computer, amplifier, several drawers of transducers and enough wires to acquire a grant in modern art, most are initially stymied. But, aren’t we all? Don’t we spend hours trying to make things work? Isn’t that what real science is all about?

The truth is that in “real life” we rarely follow a protocol and compare our results to what is expected, blaming human error if our data are at all different. Science is not about following a list of instructions; it is about trial and error (and much more error than we ever expected). That process is reduced if we truly understand the mechanisms of the system on which we are working and sometimes we are forced into that knowledge simply because we must find a way to make it work. In reality, creativity, ingenuity, interpretation, and troubleshooting are far more resourceful skills than being able to read and follow directions. It may be to everyone’s benefit to try and fail in order to better understand the inner workings of laboratory techniques. Teachers hate to see their students fail, but it is better to witness that as a part of their education rather than as a result of it.