What do I do Now? Laboratory Tales From Teaching Assistants 2003 - 2014 CHEM-601/BISC-603 Introduction to Laboratory Instruction1 Course website <www.udel.edu/chem/white/CHEM601F14.html> Instructors Hal White (2003-2014) and Seung Hong (2010-2012) TA Teaching Cases Edited by Prof. Hal White 1 Course Supported by HHMI Undergraduate Science Education Grants #52003754 and # 52005898 to the University of Delaware What Do I Do Now? Lab Tales From TAs-2003-2014 Page 2 INTRODUCTION TO TA TALES Financial support and incentives for offering Introduction to Laboratory Instruction, a course for first time Teaching Assistants in Chemistry and Biology, come from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and their four-year Undergraduate Science Education Grants to the University of Delaware that began in September 2002, 2006, and 2010. The HHMI Undergraduate Program at the University of Delaware is dedicated to "stimulating attitudes of inquiry" in the classroom and in the laboratory. Traditional methods of laboratory instruction (e. g. "cookbook laboratories") often focus on transmission of information rather than cultivating curiosity and conceptual understanding. One of the goals of this course is to catalyze a shift in the perception of a teacher's role from the being source of all knowledge to being a facilitator of student curiosity and learning. In addition to understanding the content and purpose of laboratory exercises, graduate teaching assistants must be prepared to make good decision in situations they have not encountered before. One way to introduce teaching assistants to these responsibilities is through teaching cases. A teaching case is an incomplete story in which an unresolved problem is presented and left for the reader or discussants to analyze and propose reasonable action. Frequently there is no obvious solution. Although prompting questions are not provided, one should assume that discussion of each case should address the following: What are the issues involved? What are some appropriate courses of action? What are the implications of these actions? How could the situation have been prevented or muted? The 388 teaching cases that follow portray a variety of situations and are presented alphabetically by title and not in a topical order. The cases are listed by major topics in the index at the end and often deal with multiple topics. By reading and discussing cases, teaching assistants can become familiar with the types of problems they may encounter and the issues they should consider in dealing with them. Teaching assistants drafted most of the following cases as a final assignment in Introduction to Laboratory Instruction. The situations are fictionalized and edited but they usually are based on actual experiences. In order to maintain anonymity, the names of the authors are not associated with their cases. The following chemistry and biology teaching assistants contributed to this collection: In 2003 Lushanti Ariyananda, Piyal Ariyananda, Joseph Brobst, Subhendu Chakraborti, Thomas Daniel, Matthew Dreyfus, Laural Fisher, Fernando Jove, Vamsi Kodali, Haiguong Liu, Katie Heaton, Erin Heckler, Julie Lloyd, Kristy Longsdorf, Rebecca Mason, Trey Mills, Hong-Mu Pan, Mahitha Peddy, Danny Ramadan, Melissa Reinard, Ronak Rughani, Erinc Sahin, Daphne Salick, Dan Sauers, Megan Shalaida, Prabhavathi Srinivasan, Vinod Tarwade, Peng Wang, Jianfei Zheng, and Anne Marie Zimmerman. © 2014 Harold B. White, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716 What Do I Do Now? Lab Tales From TAs-2003-2014 Page 3 In 2004 Shalini Adla, Kouame Adou, Junjun Chen, Mayura Dange, Peter DeMatteo, Feng Gao, Sandip Kumar, Aaron Lee, Timothy Leftwich, Mark Madachik, Haiyun Meng, Wesley Monillas, Radhika Nagarkar, Amber Paschal, James Plampin, Obaidur Rahaman, Juan Carlos Rodreguez-Reyes, William Thielaker, Paul Tobash, Muhua Wang, Haixia Wu, Xiaocong Xie, John Young, and Xiaochun Zhang. In 2005 James Berry, Melissa Blackman, Stephanie Bolte, Holt Bui, Luke Ceo, George Craig III, Vidyadhar Daithankar, Andrew DeAngelis, Pengfei Guo, Matthew Hassink, Zhijun Jiang, Jason Kandel, Allison Kimball, Mary Kondos, Edward Miracco, Christopher Nelson, Jayasree Padmanabhan, Katherine Perrine, Carol Roach, Justin Spano, Jeffrey Spraggins II, Sangjin Sun, Tina Tao, Yuzhen Wang, and Christopher Zordan. In 2006 Christina Anderson, Sha Bai, Brad Bauer, Ryan Boris, William Bozza, Fang Dai, Joseph Davis, Yuqian Gao, Yun Han, Jennifer Jaje, Xun Liao, Pavan Kumar Mantravadi, Danielle Martin, Anil Pandey, Bayrammurad Saparov, Heather Schmidt, Gabriela Uceda, Guangbi Yuan, Yang Zhong. In 2007 Bridget Brennan, Ming Dong, David Gerstenhaber, Bryon Herbert, Yingxin Huang, Joseph Klems, Shuyuan Liu, Kaitlin Papson, Craig Paquette, Mark Pennington, Hui Ren, Ritesh Sheth Daniel Smith, Jing Wang, and Qiongjing Zou. In 2008: Anthony Antonelli, Bryan Bzdek, Diana Chavez, Huy Dao, Srimoyee Dasgupta, Anthony Doellman, William Green, Hua He, Laurel Kegel, Hee Jin Kim, Fei Li, Jia-Ming Lin, Timothy Miller, Katelyn Nagy, Diane Pham, Ramajeyam Selvaraj, Eric Sirianni, Natalee Smith, Cem Sonmez, Fangyuan Tian, Mark Villamil, Jialiang Wang, and Si Yan. In 2009: Eser Akturk, Lauren Brown, David Chu, Matt Emberger, Christina Forbes, Jia Gao, Stefan Hailey, Daniel MacDonald, Serge Ongagna, Shuching Ou, Mallika Pathania, Carol Roach, Eric Sakowski, Meghan Shields, Kevin Shuman, Carla Spence, Jessica Wallick, and Cay Williamson. In 2010: Sona Balasubramaniam, Samantha Brannick, Di Cui, John DiMeglio, Julia Eichhorn, Amber Geitter, Parkshit Gokhale, Eric Guardino, Tatsiana Haidziuskaya, Andrew Horan, Andrew Kastner, Aasma Khan, Jennifer Kurek, Jun Liu, Miho Maeda, Jesse McAtee, Jayme Paullin, Allen Pistner, Zhou Qi, Tracy Reisenberger, Cherish Skeen, Adam Tencer, Yao Yao, Jenna Yehl, and Yuchen Zhan. In 2011: Hemanth Akkiraju, Chelsie Bartoszek, Wei Bao, Jolie Blake, Chris Bowens, Tom Carr Jr., Richard Davis, Joyita Dutta, Jennifer Eddy, Michael Elbaum, Amanda Fisher, Fei Gao, Ping Gong, Changmiao Guo, Tingwei Guo, Kerri Guth, Sean Holmes, Linna Huang, Lingxi Jiang, Bryan Klebon, Jixin Liu, Xiaohan Liu, Manman Lu, Stephanie Luff, Casey Lumpkin, James Melnyk, Alfayo Michira, Anna Murphy, Kornkamon Nopmongkol, Joshua Ottaway, Wachen Peters, Kaitlin Read, Katherine Robbins, Steven Rossi, Rachel Schaefer, Kirk Shimkin, Archanedevi Siddam, Ye-Geun Song, Nadia Stepicheva, Zachary Voras, Christopher Weinacht, and Deb Yannessa. In 2012 Baxter W Abraham, Smriti Akshaya Agrawal, Rachel E Andrews, Fowajuh N Ann-Desdemonia, Christopher M Arble, Daniel T Barnes, Corey H Basch, Brianne Bentivegna, Jason Burch, Meixi Chen, Andrew P Cinderella, Daniel C Cummins, Katie M Daisey, Randall J Derstine, Vijayarajan Devannah, Yichen Duan, Reetika Dutt, Celia Foster, Habte Ghebremichael, Christopher M © 2014 Harold B. White, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716 What Do I Do Now? Lab Tales From TAs-2003-2014 Page 4 Goodwin, James K Hartman, Alenka Hlousek-Radojcic, Ching-Wen Hou, Yu-Ting Hung, Alexander J Jones, Debora Kamin-Mukaz, Hai Liang, Xi Lin, Alisa Michelle Litan, Xiaorong Liu, Rachel Leah Marine, Joan K Mogire, Priya Nigam, Kristine E Olli, Yu Peng, Ann M Ploskonka, Andrea Michelle Potocny, Clinita E Randolph, William B Reid, Kelsey M Roberts, Anna M Scott, Scott A Shuler, Lauren Shuman, Joseph P Smith, Padma Pradeepa Srinivasan, Kenneth B Tabor, Pan Teng, Anne M Terrell, Peijun Tu, Andrew R Urmey, Mingzhang Wang, Yichen Wang, Kaitlyn M Woerner, Yue Wu, Tiantian Yu, Daniel Ross Zakheim, Jing Zhang, Songnan Zhang, Zhengqi Zhang, Jing Zhao In 2013: Priscilla Akiakonu, Amal Aldossary, Gabriel Andrade, Ashley Chabot, Angelica Claxton, Mike Colgan, Lauren Cordeiro, Matthew Fitzsimons, James Hoos, Alicia Johnston, Yehia Khalifa, Justin Krasnomowitz, Mackenzie Lauro, Zhengxin Li, J- B Lubin, Andrew Noviello, Yiyun Peng, Monichan Phay, Abish Regmi, Ornella Sathoud, Amy Schaefer, Chris Stangl, Gulon Unai Tosin, Stephanie Velardo, Yi Wang, Yiben Wang, Mackenzie Williams, Bo Yuan, Chunting Zhang. In 2014: Salma Mohammed Faraq Al Saai, Michael Apsokardu, Ramachandran Balasubramanian, Catherine Bogdanowicz, Jephter Buahen, Long Chen, Rujin Cheng, Yuan Hsiang Cheng, Lauren Coffua, Soma Dash, Thomas Dewar, Alisha Di Ianni, Conroy Field, Kelly Fisher, Nicole Flynn, Matthew Fritz, Xiaoyun Fu, Weijun Gui, Ge Guo, Chuan He, Prasanna Joglekar, Lauren Kasecky-Lardner, Zhonghui Lai, Klare Lazor, Jingjing Li, Xiangpo Li, Jennie Liao, Solomon Lynch, Alize Marangoz, Maxwell Martin, Kelsey Miller, Katharine Minker, John Nguyen, Prajwal Paudel, Colleen Pike, Anthony Quagliano, Jie Ren, Sina Rezazadeh, Katarina Rohlfing, Barbara Romero, Benjamin Rupert, Rebbeca Sahraoui, Siqi Shen, Mahbubul Shihan, Shiva Shrestha, Ishnoor Sidhu, Shannon Staig, Aparana Swarup, Tianyu Tan, Tanvir, Wenfei Tian, William Trout, Vrathasha Vrathasha, Lan Wang, Marcie Wiggins, Yinan Zhang. Hal White, Course Instructor and HHMI Undergraduate Program Director Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716 [email protected] 14 April 2015 © 2014 Harold B. White, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716 What Do I Do Now? Lab Tales From TAs-2003-2014 Page 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Case Study Title Page Butterfingers 26 A Cause for Concern 10 Caller ID 26 A Lovely TA 10 Can I get your number? 26 A Sob Story 10 Can we move on? 27 A Specious Argument 11 Candy TA 27 A Stupid Graph 11 Canvas Gone Wrong? 28 After