What is a Lab Practical?

I too was very nervous about my first lab practical (which also was in A&P I).

Our practical consisted of stations. Each station had a microscope and a question. We mainly were identifiying the different types of tissue and cells. We got one minute to read the question, look into the scope, and answer the question, before you took your paper and pen and moved the the next station.

This is how all of our exams went for A&P I.

I still studied the same as I would for a paper test. There is a WHOLE LOT of strict memorization.

Hope this helps and GOOD LUCK :wink2:

Our professor told us under normal circumstances for the bone practical the skeleton would be dismantled and numbers would be taped to the different parts of the bone and you would have to walk to different stations in the room and be able to identify it. But luckily due to lack of space and many students he gave out a three figures on a piece of paper and supplied us with a wordbank!!! Man did I get lucky.

Some professors want you to know every minute detail, so I hopeyou lucked out and didnt get one of those. :)

A lab practical is just a lab test. Instead of a scan-tron-type format with 100 or so questions, you will have to identify actual tissues, muscles, bones, etc using models, slides, bones, etc that you see in lab. (Plus always expect some that you haven't seen in lab....a new model, a different tissue slide, etc.)

The above mentioned stations are correct. If you are studying muscles, the instructor will have different models set up throughout the lab. Each one will have a number on certain muscles. You would have to say what muscle the number is on. etc....

I recommend utilizing any open lab times! Take digital photos of the models, and study those. Also, look online for anything you can find!

NOTE: When I took A&P 1 about 13 years ago, I had to know the words, and correct spelling. Luckily when I retook it in Spring '05, the instructor gave us a wordbank for the muscles and bones. It helped if you knew something started with R...narrowed it down at least.

Out of lack of time, our nervous system lab practical was multiple choice.

The first practical, over tissues and the integument system, we had to know the words ourselves. I don't think he counted off for misspelling....unless someone was too far off to be correct.

(Dermis instead of epidermis can't be counted as a misspelled word.....no matter how much someone argues it! LOL)

Granted I took it during a full semester, I made a 100 on the first lab w/o a curve. 96 on the second (100 with the curve I set) and a 93 on the last practical.

So, like I wrote earlier, utilize open lab times, the science tutoring center (if your school has one), take photos, and study all you can!!!!

Exactly like everyone has said.....STATIONS!

Ours consisited of ususally about 40 stations. We had 1 minute at each station and we moved around the room 1 station at a time in order. If you started at station #11..you just started on line #11 on the test paper for your answer. After all the stations were rotated through we were allowed 5 minutes to go back and check another station again.

In my A+P II lab practical #1 the only thing we rotated through was the microscopes and actual animal parts. For models, etc he literally put it up on the powerpoint viewer screen and just stood there pointing to stuff.

Couple things to check on:

#1 spelling. Some professors are not as strict about it but my A+P 1 teacher was extremely strict about it. I had friends lose a lot of points because they mispelled things.

#2 Microscopes. If your lab is set up anything like mine was there will be one part where are all the microscope questions are in a row. Try to start there FIRST. We weren't allowed to touch anything except the fine focus knob but it NEVER FAILED that what the pointer was pointing at in the beginning was shifted near the end of the exam. I pointed this out numerous times.....drove me NUTS!

Most of all.....relax and take a deep breath! GOOD LUCK! I was a nervous wreck for my 1rst lab practical on tissues/ integumentary but with extra credit I got a 112%. My practical grades were 112, 102, 96, 108.

wow...you guys sound like you had it easy! For my practical we had 2 questions at each station (1 min at each station) for a total of 80 questions. For the first one we had to know all the bones and be able to tell if it was the proximal/distal end, anterior/posterior, AND if it was a right or left bone! We also had a station that had a bone in a black plastic bag...you had to know what it was just by feeling it thru the bag! That wasn't too bad though..I think the hardest for me was telling the right from left for the clavicle and also being able to look at a carpal bone individually and know which one it was!

LOL the ole " guess the bone in the bag" . We had that one too. Mine was an ulna. Sometimes the stations had 2 questions like " name which side of the body this 1/2 of ox coxae belongs to" and then " name the area where the pointer is at"...which was on the pubis symphysis or something. I guess the only way you'd get which side it belonged to right was if you already knew if it was anterior/posterior.

Wow--a minute at each station would have thrown me for sure. It would have taken me that long to talk myself down--I was really nervous about the tests.

We had stuff set up all over the room and we could just wander at will as long as there weren't too many students at each area. We had alot of pins stuck in the cadaver and on the skeleton/skull, but no microscopes (but we had those for cell bio).

On our first test, the high was a 75%, so the teacher graded on a curve and gave us a make-up assignment to cover the difference. Our final wasn't so bad--alot of it was on the heart, ear, etc. and to save space near the cadavers some of the questions were on the plastic "diagrams".

Our text (Tortora) had an on-line tutorial which let you take quizzes on each body part. I found that really helpful. Maybe yours has the same thing. Otherwise, if you know it on paper you will (for the most part) be able to recognize it on a body (and vice versa). Mostly I just studied the pictures in my lab book.

Study hard, but RELAX--it probably won't be as bad as you think and you will be so glad when it's over :).

The first time taking it...13 yrs ago, we only had a minute at each station, and we could not go back.

I lucked out this time, we could spend as much time as we needed at each station, and could go back to any of them. The basic rules were: no talking, no standing over someone's shoulder when you are waiting for a station (go to another one if possible), and keep your paper folded.

We did not have a "bone in a bag" question...how crazy! We did have a few "What bone is this? Is this bone on the left or right side of the body?" etc