Information about the people behind the MDCUNE project.
Changing the World, One Lab at a Time.
When Dr. Grisham was an undergraduate, he wanted to change the world. Now, as a UCLA professor, he has combined the resources of UCLA’s Office of Instructional Development, the UCLA Psychology Department, and the National Science Foundation to make his dream come true. Dr. Grisham is taking the high-quality laboratory experiences that he offers his students at UCLA and transforming them so that they are completely digital. Further, he has provided these digital teaching tools on the web so that they can be downloaded for free from https://mdcune.psych.ucla.edu/.
These digital labs offer the same inquiry-based experiences given to UCLA students; they are not demonstrations, simulations, or “cookbook exercises.” The first three labs available include neurophysiology, bioinformatics, and an investigation of hormonal influences on neural development. Students design their own experiments to discover the characteristics of a neural circuit, discover genes that could have an impact on neural phenotypes, and replicate and extend studies of steroid effects on spinal cord or birdsong system development.
Students and faculty anywhere can access these tools and encounter the same great laboratory experience as UCLA students do, regardless of limitations on resources. So far, over seven thousand hits from all over the United States and over sixty foreign countries have reached the website.