Department of Biology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2013 Jun 1;12(2):262-73. doi: 10.1187/cbe.12-08-0129.
Biology students enrolled in a typical undergraduate physiology course encounter Poiseuille's law, a physics equation that describes the properties governing the flow of blood through the circulation. According to the equation, a small change in vessel radius has an exponential effect on resistance, resulting in a larger than expected change in blood flow. To help engage students in this important concept, we performed a physics experiment as a lecture demonstration to mimic the original research by the 19th-century French scientist. We tested its impact as a research project and found that students who viewed the demonstration reacted very positively and showed an immediate increase in test performance, while the control group was able to independently "catch up" at the fourth week posttest. We further examined whether students' math skills mapped to learning gains. The students with lower math scores who viewed the demonstration had slightly more improvement in test performance than those students who did not view the demonstration. Our data suggest that watching a lecture demonstration may be of even greater benefit to biology students with lower math achievement.
生物学专业的学生在修读典型的本科生理学课程时，会遇到泊肃叶定律，这是一个描述血液在循环系统中流动特性的物理方程。根据该方程，血管半径的微小变化对阻力有指数级的影响，导致血流的变化大于预期。为了帮助学生理解这个重要的概念，我们进行了一项物理实验作为讲座演示，以模拟 19 世纪法国科学家的原始研究。我们将其作为研究项目进行了测试，发现观看演示的学生反应非常积极，他们的测试成绩立即提高，而对照组在第四周的后测时能够独立“迎头赶上”。我们进一步研究了学生的数学技能是否与学习成绩的提高有关。观看演示的数学成绩较低的学生在测试成绩上的提高幅度略高于没有观看演示的学生。我们的数据表明，观看讲座演示可能对数学成绩较低的生物学学生更为有益。
