Feb 5 Preliminary proposal due in class.

Feb 6 - Feb 11 Conferences with instructor to discuss proposal.

Mar 4 Final proposal due in class.

May 6   Poster presentations performed in pairs.
                All materials returned to stockroom or appropriate lab and work areas cleaned.

May 11 (Tuesday) Project paper due by 9:30 PM (no exceptions).  [This corresponds to the end of the scheduled exam period for this course].

---

Preliminary Proposals

You and your project partner should list questions or phenomena that are of mutual interest and may be subject to an experimental investigation. At this stage in planning, listing more than one potential project is fine. Once you have one or more potential projects in mind, go to the library. Is there literature on the subject(s) that you are considering?  Which department faculty members might be of assistance?

Your preliminary proposal should consist of the following for each potential project:

1. Project title
2. A brief statement of the question to be addressed experimentally
3. A list of relevant literature (at least one primary reference, a reference not from a textbook)

In conference with your instructor, the project list and the scope of a given project will be narrowed

---

Final Proposals

Introduction

1. Clearly state the overall objective of the project. What is the central question you will address?
2. What are the specific aims?
3. Provide background information to put your proposed study in perspective. Cite the relevant literature.
4. State the hypotheses you will be testing and predictions of the various hypotheses. What are your expectations, what do you expect to observe?

Materials and Methods

1. Provide a clear and detailed description of your proposed experiments. What are the treatments, the controls, and the sample sizes? How will you evaluate the results?
2. List the materials, chemicals, and equipment you will need and the quantities needed. Prepare departmental requisition forms, including catalog numbers for chemicals, kits, etc. that must be ordered.

Literature Cited

List the references you cite in the introduction. References should be original journal articles. Textbook citations are not sufficient.

Proposals, both the preliminary proposal and the revised "final" version should be written jointly by you and your project partner. One proposal per group.

---

Project Procedures

1. Conduct agreement. You will be required to submit an acknowledgment that you have read and understand the rules for students working in research labs included at the end of this document before you are assigned a work area. Please respect the work of others; do not disturb other groups' work or borrow materials without permission.

2. Departmental Resources. Some equipment and supplies will be checked out from the Biology Department stockroom. A written request for materials should be signed first by your instructor and then taken to the stockroom manager, Darcy Blankenhorn. She will sign out materials to you by keeping a card file with your name and a list of items that are borrowed. Other materials will be available in the lab classroom or other biology department laboratory.  In all cases, please return items as soon as you are finished with them. This is particularly important when you check out chemicals. Please return chemical supplies as soon as you have made the solutions for which they were required. When your project is completed, return all items (clean and dry) to the storeroom where they will be checked in. All project materials must be returned to the stockroom or other owner before poster presentations are given.

3. Lab Notebook. Each project group must keep a notebook in which all records are made. All procedures, data, observations, calculations, and any information that is part of your study must be recorded in this notebook. A hardbound notebook is ideal for this purpose (available in the art supplies area of the Bookstore). This laboratory notebook should contain your original notes, no recopying. The notebook is to be submitted with one of the project papers. Further notebook guidelines available on-line.

5.  Poster Presentation. Each project pair will prepare a poster presentation on their study.  The poster will be used as the basis for a joint 10-15 minute oral report to the class during the last week of classes

5. Final Report. Project papers are written in the form of a scientific manuscript. The format of these papers follows that used in Biology 109 last semester. PLEASE REFER to your Biology 109 lab manual. You can also acces Bio 109 on-line help.

Length, content, organization. Your final reports will longer than the typical lab reports because they include more work. However, I expect that you will follow the same basic format and continue to place greatest emphasis on the analysis of data. Typical reports have been 5-8 pages in length, excluding figures and legends.

• INTRODUCTIONS should clearly lay out the background of the topic and the purpose of the study. Appropriate outside sources should be cited. You may have a great deal of relevant information/text already prepared in your project proposal.
• MATERIALS AND METHODS sections should concisely describe the procedures in detail adequate for a professional to repeat the experiment. Where kits were used, you can largely cite the manufacturer's instructions and omit a lengthy description.
• RESULTS and DISCUSSION sections may be combined, if you prefer. Figures with proper legends should be prepared according to the guidlines and conventions of previous lab reports. These should be attached to the back instead of embedded within the text. Data should be described and interpreted in the text, not the figure legend. NOTE: Even when experiments did not "work," you have data to analyze. Consider these questions: What do the experiments tell you about your hypothesis? How do the data differ from the expectations? Why? What do they tell you about designing the experiments you should do next? It is appropriate to comapre your data to that in the published literature. Be sure to cite sources properly. Are your results consistent, or do they follow logically? If not, then why not?
• REFERENCES: Please list all articles you cite in a list of references. Formatting differs between journals. You may use any reasonable format as long as it is consistent thoughout the list.
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (see note below)

Collaboration on the final report: A Special Concern.

• Each member of a project team should submit her/his own, individual report. However, teams can work together in the preparation of these reports to a substantial degree. I encourage you to analyze data, prepare figures, edit, and even write the text of your reports collaboratively. I recognize that this type of collaboration will result in reports sharing a great deal of textual similarity. This is not a problem.
• The degree to which you collaborated on your final report must be explicitly described in a separate ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS section. This will be more extensive than the acknowledgements typically found in scientific papers. In addition to the ordinary expressions of gratitude to your partner, funding agency, helpers, donors of materials, etc., you must assess the performance and relative efforts of your partner and yourself on the project. Does this work reflect a productive partnership? Did you pull your weight during the experiments and report preparation? Did your partner?
  
  

The project paper and notebook are due at 9:30 PM on Tuesday, May 11, 2004.  No Exceptions.

<<return to syllabus<<
<<return to schedule<<