This multi-week “performing inquiry” lab has students proposing, designing, conducting, writing, and presenting a scientific research project of their own design.  On-going peer-review/critique of student research proposals, articles and presentations allows students to experience how the scientific community establishes the validity of scientific knowledge.  In this way students experience the power that science has to reveal the workings of the natural world, the dynamic nature and tentativeness of this knowledge, and how the scientific community operates to establish the validity of scientific knowledge.

Lab Summary

During this multi-week investigation students literally become practicing scientists by proposing, conducting, presenting biological experiments of their own design. In order to manage this process given the material and time constraints of most labs, students are asked to limit their question to one that relates to metabolism (photosynthesis and/or cellular respiration) in plants, and how natural variation they observe among individuals may influence these metabolic processes and their connections to productivity.  Students are encouraged to explore questions that are of interest to them, or that are in some way related to real‐world issues they may be exploring in class. Once students develop their questions, they are asked to develop a research proposal. Their proposals are then peer‐reviewed by other teams in the class and the lab instructor.  Feedback from their peers is then addressed and over the course of 3 weeks teams implement their research proposals. Each member of the team writes a draft scientific article, which is also peer-reviewed.  Revised articles have the opportunity to be published in our Journal of Undergraduate Biological Investigations (JUBI). The independent projects culminate in a research symposium in which students share their research with their classmates.

Conceptual Learning Objectives - Upon completion of this multi-week lab, students should be able to

• discuss the metabolic connections between cellular respiration and photosynthesis influence productivity, and on how environmental, physical, developmental variation among plants can influence these metabolic processes and therefore productivity.

Scientific Skills - During this independent project students will (with continued feedback from their peers and the lab instructor)

• formulate a biologically-based question.
• develop a properly formatted conceptually (using concepts explored in introductory biology) justified experimental hypothesis and prediction.
• develop an experiment which
• properly assigns a dependent and independent variables
• has proper control groups (negative & positive where appropriate) and controls variables across treatments and trials.
• properly controls for selection bias in assigning subjects to treatments.
• provide a detailed and conceptually accurate explanation of the conceptual relations between the biological processes and a quantitative measures of that process used in their experiment.
• record, organize, sort and graph data in a MS Excel spreadsheet
• choose the appropriate graph to summarize data where the dependent and independent variables are both continuous measurement variables.
• choose the appropriate type of inferential statistical analysis to perform on data from an experiment of their own design.
• generate and Interpret other relevant descriptive statistics: r2, slope of a best fit linear equation, measures of variation (standard deviation or error).
• use appropriate inferential statistical tests (SLR, t-test, Chi-square) performed in MS Excel (or StatPlus for Mac) to analyze data.
• draw conclusions from their data analysis using biological concepts explored in an introductory biology course and/or primary literature research.
• communicate experimental research findings in both written (scientific article) and oral (research symposium presentation) formats.
• provide thoughtful and accurate evaluation of the merits of research proposals and articles developed by other teams in the class.

Learning Theory & Pedagogy

The focus of this multi-week investigation is to build on students understanding of how science is done by having them experience the entire process of science from (hypothesis formation, aspects of experimental design and predictions) up to the students. Asking good (biologically relevant) questions, formulating informed hypotheses and experimental predicitions, and devising effective procedures are among the most creative and also challenging aspects of science.  Allowing students to have an authentic science experience, early in their academic career, can help students begin to decide whether or not basic or applied scientific research is of interest to them professionally.  In fact, even for those who will not become practicing scientists, the problem-solving nature of science and the intellectual skills employed are easily transferable to other fields/disciplines.  Students require practice employing these important intellectual skills and they require constant feedback on their progress.  This independent project lab experience utilizes a peer-review process to do this.  The process purposefully mimics how the professional scientific community scrutinizes the ideas/work of their peers and is intended to help students understand how the scientific community validates knowledge as accurate or judges the likelihood of success, merit, and importance of proposed research ideas.   This project has found that students are more likely to use scientific knowledge to inform their decisions about science-related issues when they also understand the limitations of this knowledge and the lengths to which the community of professional scientists have gone to establish its accuracy. 
 
Instructional Resources

• An instructor guide which provide lab instructors with lab preparation instructions, suggested materials, learning theory and pedagogical suggestions.
• A PowerPoint tutorial which introduces students to fundamental aspects of plant metabolism, the energetic connections between photosynthesis and respiration in plants and how to use the CO₂ uptake/release method to estimate GPP and NPP.
• Lab manual appendix that teach students how to use the Vernier data loggers and gas sensors.
• Lab manual appendix exploring experimental design, descriptive statistics, graphing and inferential statistics using MS Excel.

Required Materials

• Vernier data loggers and CO₂ gas sensor
• Team computers with MS Excel
• High intensity (>1600 lumen) florescent bulb lamps
• Other Vernier sensors can also be made available for use in individual projects (light intensity, salinity, PAR, soil moisture, temperature etc.)  Visit Vernier for a list available sensors.