Learning Goal Reflection from Second to Last Class Week.

(Learning Goals Pasted From Professor Price's Lab Notebook)

• read and write scientific papers.

During this last week we read scientific papers of our choice which we then used to create posters conveying the experimental design - use of IMRD in the papers we each chose to read.  While I was absent for this exercise I chose a paper focusing on the relationship between sexual attrativeness and earning potential for working class females, which showed a significant difference at the p=.04 level that working class females considered to be more sexually attractive by socially constructed standards earn more than working class females considered to less sexually attractive by socially constructed standards of beaty including weight, bust size, hair length, and minutes spent on beauty prepping before work.  This was a social science paper so the significance level was .10 as well.  

• examine and participate in the steps of observation-driven investigations, including crafting scientific questions and hypotheses, designing experiments, collecting and analyzing data, interpreting and presenting results.

On Thursday we created posters that outlined proposals presenting our data in IMRD for the question of hours worked vs GPA which we looked into for the other BES 301 class.  This included interpreting and presenting results to present in a poster conveying the IMRD paper form.  I do understand why we undertook this excercise, as focusing on a topic of our choice was a question raised earlier in our class, yet to be completely honest I found this exercise to be somewhat of a distracting segway in the subject matter of this course especially as we near the end of the final paper being do.  I think some students may have felt like we were being made to esentially produce assistant rather than student work in determining to raise this issue, but to be honest I think they were just misunderstanding that the key point of this class was to learn and form a strong base in the techincal apspects of the scientific process and writing scientific papers.  Thus this information is much more straightforward and easier to learn buy taking pre-determined data and applying the scientific formats rather than having to start from scratch and building on everything from there, yet as mentioned above I think some students misinterpreted this understanding in analyzing why we worked off of the Nucella Lamellosa Data set as opposed to individually picking topics of our choice.   

• document your scientific experiences in a lab notebook.
  Doing this now, so yes.
• conduct research collaboratively, participating in peer review.

On Thurday we listened to three different presentations from our fellow students on the posters they produced for the papers they read on Tuesday, and in turn presented our posters to other students. 

• locate and review scientific literature related to a specific question.

 

Class Reflection on Learning Goals

(Learning Goals Pasted From Professor Price's Lab Notebook)

• read and write scientific papers.

Yes this last week we spent a lot of time finalizing our discussion pieces for our draft submission and peer review.

• examine and participate in the steps of observation-driven investigations, including crafting scientific questions and hypotheses, designing experiments, collecting and analyzing data, interpreting and presenting results. 

document your scientific experiences in a lab notebook.

Doing this now, so yes.

• conduct research collaboratively, participating in peer review.

We spent time determining who would be reviewing one anothers papers. We also spent time looking into papers to use for our final papers as both referances and format guides.  We also participated in  

• locate and review scientific literature related to a specific question.

 reviewed exmaples of disussion section in preparing for our work in peer reviewing our group members papers.

Computer Lab Sources Worksheet and Last Week Class

Article 1

Citation: Pike G. 2008. First-year students' employment, engagement, and academic achievement: untangling the relationship between work and grades. 45(4) 560-582

Why is it useful?  In this piece direct data in analyzed and presented to determine trends between first year student employment and academic achievement.  It is very good fact information, scientific paper.

What hypothesis do they test?  Wether or not student employment hours have a significant effect on academic acheivement.  

Why do they test this hypothesis? To determine if students working longer hours show trends of more engagment and success or less engagment and less academic success.

Why is this hypothesis relevant to your research?  Its right on topic, do hours work have a negative effect on academic performance.

Article 2

Citation:

Dondes L. Balancing Work and Academics in College: Why Do Students Working 10 to 19 Hours Per Week Excel?. Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory and Practice 2006, 8 (1): 107-120.

Why is it useful?  This article focuses on why students who do work within this recomended time range do well, which in turn is kinda of an explanatory counter to why those who go over may not do as well.  Not the direct question, but still provides good insight.

What hypothesis do they test?  Whether students engaged in reccomended amount of hours perform better than students who dont work. 

Why do they test this hypothesis?  My understanding is that they bascially think these people who work these specified amount of hours may actually have a stronger sense of work ethic responsability which poors over into their academci performance as well.

Why is this hypothesis relevant to your research?  It provides me with insight into issues to consider when setting up variables, like hours worked verses part or full time ect.

Article 3

Citation: Samuel, T. 2008.  Understanding Academic Trends in Non-Traditional Working Adults. [cited November 14 2010]. 54-58 (Eric)

Why is it useful? This article looks specifically at variations in academic performance for working adults, such kids at home, and income. 

What hypothesis do they test? To determine if working in general or work and other social factors have more of an impact on academic performance.

Why is this hypothesis relevant to your research?  It relates to the end the spectrum related longer working hours and school performance.

Use CSE style citation to record the reference for an article that is NOT useful.

Citation:

Why isn’t it useful? Fasner, K. 2006 Academic Retention in Italian Universities: Following the changeing Tides. Traditional Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, v5 n1 p39-41. (Eric)

What hypothesis do they test?  Are current economic conditions having an effect on college retention rates in Italy   

Why do they test this hypothesis?To determine if academic retention rates have been influenced by economic changes.

Why isn’t this hypothesis relevant to your research?  Its more based on governmental economic trends, which isnt really related to work vs. individual student performance.

Learning Objectives (Posted From Instructors Lab Notebook

• read and write scientific papers.
• examine and participate in the steps of observation-driven investigations, including crafting scientific questions and hypotheses, designing experiments, collecting and analyzing data, interpreting and presenting results.

Working on our in class experimental designs to conduct on the other class we crafted scienfic question in group that to a research hypothesis to test the effect of hours worked outside of school on academic performance.  Thursday we then actually set up experimental designs on posters to pick which one as a class we really wanted to pursue. I was so excited when I thought we won, but I then realized the lowest score was best, lol. - So there I was interpreting the results of this vote, but had them wrong, so through re-analyzing the data I presented that I was in fact a loser, when I thought I was winner, LOL. 

• document your scientific experiences in a lab notebook.

I'm pretty sure we did this, but I just can't put my thumb on an exact time I was actually doing this.  Just kidding, sorry, I think therefore I am- I am bloggin on my lab notebook therefore and documenting my scientific experiences in a lab notebook.  This one cracks me up every time for some reason.

• conduct research collaboratively, participating in peer review.

We researched collaboratively this week to find our articles, but no peer review, atleast I sure hope not becuase that would mean I not present while being present, not a good state to be in during science class.

• locate and review scientific literature related to a specific question.

We spent all of Thursday finding three useful article and one non useful article.  It is very clear that some subjects seem to really be a pain to find articels ready to go in full text, I dislike this we can order it stuff, but I do understand, they should hire someone to spend every day just sitting there requesting articles so then they are in. Yep they should.  Or maybe I could do it myself but that is a lot of work.

Tue. Thur. Learning Goal Reflection

(Learning Goals Pasted From Professor Price's Lab Notebook)

• read and write scientific papers.

-This last week we read our fellow group members results sections and provided peer review on these sections.  I then used the peer review I recieved from my group member to improve my results section by making it shorter and more to point and removing information i had in my results section that did belong in this section of a scientific paper.

• examine and participate in the steps of observation-driven investigations, including crafting scientific questions and hypotheses, designing experiments, collecting and analyzing data, interpreting and presenting results.

-During the course of my peer review of one of my group members results section, I had to analyze and interpret his data so that I was able to provide him feedback on his results.  I actually ended up being wrong on what I thought should have been in his results, which made me feel really bad since I basically bashed his paper when I was the one that didn't know what I was talking about, but it was a good learning experience. i.e. it's a good idea to defineitly know what your talking about before you go and try to tell someone else they are actually wrong, lol.  But I was atleast able to save face by apologzing and he was very graceful in accepting it.

• document your scientific experiences in a lab notebook.

-Well here I am right now doing this, lol, but we covered some very good information last week on how to improve upon our lab notebook entries, the biggest one being, as seen here the outlining of the learning goals as filled in headers, rather than reaching to remember how we met these goals.

• conduct research collaboratively, participating in peer review.

-well as I noted above we reviewed the results section from one of our group members, then used this feed back to improve upon our own results section, and this was all done collaboratively. 

• locate and review scientific literature related to a specific question.

-We reviewed the articles we had found a while back in building a rubric outline for our discussion section, this all went very well and has helped to understand exactly what I should or shouldnt be including in my discussion section.  Thanks, Nick Dotson signing Out.  MC' Flater.

Cover Letter Worksheet

In your lab notebook, briefly explain what you learned by reading this letter to the editor. (From Becca Price's Worksheet). 

Well the very first thing I learned from this letter to the editor was that the more care you take to polish your work and take into consideration what certain journals may be looking for, the more work you will save yourself on the other end in having to re-edit and or adjust your article to get it published.  I also noticed that a letter to the editor doesn’t always serve as merely a notice of making the changes a journal editor asked for, but may also serve as a second opportunity to re-sell keeping some of your work the same and explain why some of the issues they had with your work should actually remain as is in your opinion as the author of the article.  Obviously the letter to the editor is also a very important sales pitch upon an initial semi-rejection of your piece, so you want to be very polite and convincing in how your writing is conveyed.  For example, you obviously don’t want to come as, “well actually I’m the one that did the work and know what this article should include”.  Instead, as shown above you want note that you definitely see where the editor is coming from, but based on a certain experience or issue previously made unaware, you think a certain part should remain the same.  Based on the above letter to the editor, it also seems very important to directly address the changes you made and explain exactly how you may have used their advice to make these changes, rather just changing everything they pointed out and listing it as changed.  In closing, the one of the most important things is to come off as thankful for their advice and input.

RESLTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nick Dotson-BES 301-Results

Results

No Significance in Shell Growth Mean Differences

v  In looking at this information on Nucella lamellosa’s shell weight growth within a control group and knocked off barnacle 1 time daily group, the following results convey the findings from a data analysis comparing these groups’ end date shell growth means.  As represented in figure 1.1 a numerical difference between these two groups’ means and standard errors did exist.  With a control group end date shell growth mean=0.264 and a standard error of plus or minus=0.029066972.  And a knocked off 1 time daily end date shell growth mean=0.203 with a standard error of plus or minus=0.036485918.  A t-test assuming unequal variances ran with a significance level of 0.05 however, showed no statistical significance to this difference in means at the (p=0.208403) level.  Due to my significance level conveying I was willing to make a mistake 5% of the time and the p value coming in at (p=0.208403), this meant there was a greater than twenty percent chance that the differences in means shown was due to random chance alone.  Based on these results I was then able to reject my null hypothesis of “a significant difference will exist between the end date shell weight growth of the control group and the end date shell weight growth of the knocked off barnacle 1 time daily group.  In turn, based on these same findings I accepted my research hypotheses that” a significant difference will not exist between the end date shell weight growth of the control group and the end date shell weight growth of the knocked off barnacle 1 time daily group.  Data-(Price et al 2002-2010)

Figure 1.1: Error bars represent standard error across population in each distinct group shown. p=0.208403

   

 

 

Library WS sources Day

Price, RM 2010-INTEGRATIVE AND COMPARATIVE BIOLOGY Emersion limits short term growth rates in intertidal Nucella lamellosa (E140)

Why is it useful? This article covers specifically the relationship between emersion and growth, and notes that feeding access does seem to show a signifigant difference in growth like emersion does, which will help support my results of no significance.

What hypothesis do they test?  Emersion rates and prey access effect the growth rates of Nucella Lamallosa. 

Why do they test this hypothesis?  To determine if the interdial exposure of nucella lamellosa explains the difference in size between snails who live of beahces with tides and snails that live constantly in the water.

Why is this hypothesis relevant to your research?
It provides information regarding the no significance between being knocked off barnacles one each day and the the control group that has access to prey 24/7.


Nienhuis S, Palmer AR, Harley CDG 2010- Elevated CO₂ affects shell dissolution rate but not calcification rate in a marine snail. Proc. R. Soc. .(0206)

Why is it useful?

What hypothesis do they test?

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Why is this hypothesis relevant to your research?

Why is it useful?

What hypothesis do they test?

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