Integrating the Electronic Desktop into the Natural Sciences

Curriculum Development Project at California State University, Los Angeles

FlyLab

FlyLab was created for an introductory college genetics course. Students can investigate "experimentally" the principles of inheritance by simulating a genetics laboratory of the common fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster. Flies carrying various mutations are designed by the user and "mated" to produce offspring. Offspring can also be mated to produce later generations. Backcrosses and testcrosses are also possible. In fact, any two flies created by FlyLab can be mated as long as they are of the opposite sex and don't carry different mutations from the same category. The user sees a graphical representation of each fly with a replication factor and abbreviated character description. Tools are available for viewing a high-resolution magnified image of any fly, performing statistical tests of hypotheses concerning the crosses, getting a text log of the matings and offspring, and saving flies for later use during the same session. A screen image of a typical FlyLab session appears below. FlyLab was written by Dr. Robert Desharnais.

Click to download full resolution image (65.8 KB.)

The Electronic Desktop Project is about improving the way science is taught and learned by bringing the power of advanced workstation technology to introductory science students in both major and general education classes. This involves changing the way in which instruction is delivered using multi-media electronic mail, custom written visualization applications, powerful commercial software packages, and easy-to-use graphical applications that bring the resources of the Internet into the electronic classroom. This project has been funded by grants USE 9153162, DUE 9156142 and DUE 9455428 from the National Science Foundation. For more information contact Dr. Robert Desharnais (biology), (213) 343-2056, rdeshar@calstatela.edu, or Dr. Gary Novak (geology), (213) 343-2406, gnovak@calstatela.edu, California State University, Los Angeles, California, 90032.
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