Advances in Biology Laboratory Education, formerly Tested Studies for Laboratory Teaching (1980-2019), is the proceedings of the Association for Biology Laboratory Education’s annual conference. It is a peer reviewed publication. Individuals who wish to present at an ABLE conference must submit a proposal for their presentation. This includes major workshops, mini workshops and posters, and all are peer reviewed in the acceptance process. At our annual conference, presentations are reviewed by the faculty and academic staff participants.
For example, a 3-hour major workshop would typically be presented to as many as 25 participants in each of two separate sessions. Each participant completes a critical review at the end of each workshop session using an online survey (either a short or long form). These reviews are compiled by the publication editors and anonymized copies are sent to the workshop presenters to assist them in the preparation of their final manuscript. The number of these participant peer reviews typically ranges from 15-40 separate written reviews. Short forms are also completed after mini workshop and during poster sessions.
Following are PDF previews of the questions used for session reviews:
- Major Workshop – Long Form Evaluation | Short Form Evaluation
- Mini Workshop – Peer Evaluation
- Poster Session – Peer Evaluation
Attendees looking to fill out the reviews at the ABLE conference, click here (members-only access).
Note: For the virtual ABLE (ViABLE) 2021 conference, different forms were used
to accommodate the different session types.
The final level of peer review is conducted by our editorial committee when final manuscripts of presented workshops and posters are submitted for publication. Separate from format editing, our editorial committee pays close attention to the responses of authors to the participant peer reviews. This same process applies to the 45-90 minute mini workshops and poster presentations.
The result is our annual peer reviewed publication, Advances in Biology Laboratory Education, published since 1980, that distributes quality biology laboratory activities, explores pedagogy issues, and contributes to science education in general.