[nabs-l] Labs

Sun Aug 23 17:02:02 UTC 2009

Hello Chelsea and all,

	I was a biology major in college and so I took two general biology
courses with labs and two general chem. Courses with labs. I’ll share
some things that worked for me.

	Almost all of my lab projects for all four courses were done In
groups of four, or at least in groups of two. As long as your lab
assignment is a group endeavor, not being able to see images from a
microscope or chemical reactions won’t be a big problem. The key is to
simply ask for information from your other group members and try to
get a good enough explanation to be able to describe what happened in
your write-up. If the lab is particularly visual, you may want to
offer to take on extra note-taking, calculations, or writing for your
group in exchange for the visual descriptions.

	One difference between high school and college science courses is
that the college courses tend to emphasize the scientific
process—making observations, identifying research questions, making
predictions and testing those predictions by designing an experiment.
The good news is that most of these  steps—with the exception of
initial observation—don’t require vision. Because of the emphasis on
scientific process, experiments often won’t be as complicated as ones
you might have done in high school, since much of your time will  be
spent designing your project. Actually, in a year of bio labs I think
I only had to complete one microscope lab. Several of my labs didn’t
even use organisms at all—using coin tosses to simulate genetic drift,
for example. If you can get your lab partners to give you information
about what’s happening visually, you can still be an active
participant and even a leader in the steps of identifying your
research question, making predictions and designing your experiment.
We had one lab in which we had to watch a pack of crickets for ten
minutes and then come up with an experiment to test some aspect of
their behavior. My group was able to give me a pretty good
play-by-play of what the crickets were doing so I could help develop
the experiment and write it up afterward.

	There are some things, like dissections, that you can do
independently even though your lab instructor might be reluctant to
let you try it. If you  want to do a dissection or some other hands-on
activity but haven’t done it before, you may want to ask your lab
instructor for a little one-on-one lesson the week before the lab. I
believe most instructors for introductory science labs are graduate
teaching assistants. Many of these people are getting their Ph.D.’s in
the field that they are teaching. Speaking as a graduate TA in
psychology, I’ll say that most graduate TA’s will be glad to work
one-on-one with a motivated student, especially compared with the
monotonous grading and other tasks that aren’t nearly as fun or
rewarding. So by all means take advantage of your TA’s knowledge as
much as you can.

	Some blind students use in-lab readers (or “lab assistants”) to help
them access information. I used them and at times they were helpful. I
don’t think it’s necessary to have one unless the lab project you are
doing is an individual project and you need to get visual information
(such as color changes, microscope images etc.) in order to understand
the lab. As long as it’s a group lab, I think lab assistants  are nice
but not essential. I also think it’s preferable to hire your own lab
assistant instead of going through a disability services office,
although sometimes the DSS can help you find qualified readers if you
can’t find one. It’s important to show your professor and lab
instructor that you are in charge of the lab assistant. For example, I
have a friend who wasn’t allowed to participate in any chemistry lab
activities unless her lab assistant was present. You don’t want to be
subjected to those kinds of rules—you  need to be in charge of your
accommodations and make your own decisions about how they will be
used.

	I’ll make one more comment which is a bit more general but I think is
important. Many sighted people (and some blind people too) believe
that because math and science is often very visual for the sighted,
and blind  people don’t have access to the visual information, blind
students are therefore at a disadvantage. In my experience this  isn’t
the case at all, and in my opinion the visual information taught in
math and science courses is often not nearly as important in the long
term as it may seem. For instance, in introductory biology courses
(especially at the high school level) knowing what a cell looks like
and where all the different parts of the cell are located is highly
emphasized. However, in order to really understand biology, knowing
what a cell looks like is a lot less important than understanding what
happens inside a cell, how the parts of the cell interact and how
cells interact with each other to form more complex systems. I have a
bachelor’s degree in biology and I still have a very shady mental
image of what a cell looks like. I was able to succeed by
understanding the functional concepts—knowing what happens during
essential processes inside the cell such as DNA replication, for
instance. You can learn these concepts by using tactile diagrams or
3-D models—and these may be helpful especially if you are a visual
learner. But you can also learn these things verbally without any
pictures. Similarly, in higher math courses a lot of emphasis is
placed on graphing equations, etc. But ultimately, knowing how to
graph an equation will only get you so far, while knowing the
mathematics involved is much more important to conceptual
understanding in the long term. The key is to find a learning style
that works for you—whether it involves tactile graphics, verbal
instruction, or some other method—and using it even if it’s not the
same method as what sighted students may use. Nonvisual methods for
learning can be just as effective—and in some cases maybe even more
effective in the long term—than visual ones.

I hope this is helpful. Feel free to write me off-list if you have
more  specific questions or concerns. Good luck!

Arielle

On 8/23/09, Teal Bloodworth <tealbloodworth at gmail.com> wrote:
> could you not have someone who looks into the microscope describe what they
> see?
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "C Page" <chelseap08 at gmail.com>
> To: <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 10:24 PM
> Subject: [nabs-l] Labs
>
>
>> Hi!  I am a freshmen at Hinds CC in Mississippi, and I am taking my
>> first class that happens to require a lab.  How do you get around the
>> obstacles such as looking at stuff through a microscope?
>>
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-- 
Arielle Silverman
President, National Association of Blind Students
Phone:  602-502-2255
Email:
nabs.president at gmail.com
Website:
www.nabslink.org