Experimenting and failing to achieve success: Building proteins and membranes

Learning styles differ from person to person, but everyone has a path to successful learning and an approach to the way in which they learn effectively. The past few weeks in lab--whether in the classroom or at the MFA-- we have employed our way of learning in many ways. The list of words and how we learn differed from person to person, but there was also an overlap on key words. These key words identify how though learning can be individual and different there are also similarities and patterns.

The main words found throughout our group were: building, creating, laughing, observing, and planning.  Each of these five things have followed us throughout the weeks and we have built not only structures with Zometools, but friendships amongst one another. Building requires a number of pre-requisites such as observing and planning, which are two of our other five main words. At the same time, building requires nothing! There is permeability and change within everything, therefore in the process of creating we need to laugh, imagine, and pretend.

Annie and Liam began their building process laughing and creating. They decided to use the primary colors for the sticks and connected them to the white balls. They worked together to find a way to best represent a "working protein" for their model. They also understood that it required consideration and contemplation. Saed and Melissa worked first with yellow and blue sticks, but found that the lines were straight, they had to reassess the approach they were taking, but that is ok! They are on the path to learning and understanding. Pat and I worked together to make a graph and create a blogpost. We analyzed the way in which our group members worked together to represent proteins and membranes.

Through the lab in week five, our team recognized that we have different learning styles and approaches. By providing us a list of words to describe our learning, our similarities and differences were presented in front of us. Rather than impeding our learning, our differences helped us expand on our knowledge and our similarities create even more strength throughout our team. Our final product was spectacular and even more importantly, we left with a more diverse understanding of how things work.