Microbiology: A Laboratory Experience
“Microbiology: A Laboratory Experience” is designed as a comprehensive laboratory manual for undergraduate students in microbiology and allied disciplines. This manual covered topics such as general introduction, microscopy, bacterial culture methods, staining techniques, biochemical tests, antimicrobial susceptibility tests. It also included a chapter consisting of guided activities focusing on human skin microbiome. In addition, topics such as microbial food safety, epidemiology and public health were also discussed. Although this book covered different topics in microbiology, I felt this book could have provided users with a more comprehensive understanding of microbiology concepts in a more structured and systematic approach. I felt this manual is too focused on a few topics and some of the activities suggested could be more useful for clinical microbiology students.
I did not see any errors in terms of accuracy in the content provided. However, certain generalized statements in certain parts of the manual should be revisited with the current scientific understanding to ensure the accuracy of the content
The contents of the manual are relevant to the field. Certain fundamental concepts such as adjusting the microscope to get better images, difference between magnification and resolution, various biochemical tests and their significance in clinical context are well discussed and useful to students.
I found the manual is simple to follow and use but it is text heavy. Users should spend a significant amount of time reading the content in the text format. This could be improved by adding more figures, images and flow diagrams, etc.
Yes! This manual has used consistent terminology. However, providing definitions of the terminology when first used in the manual would help students to better understand the content
As mentioned, I found this manual requires user to spend reading the text heavy portion of the content. This limits the user to navigate through different sections at will to make them self-explanatory and standalone topics.
Organization of topics in this manual can be improved. Terminologies such as gram staining technique and all are used in the beginning chapters without introducing these concepts earlier. This way of organizing content makes it difficult for the students to follow the content.
Quality of images and figures are not good.
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Overall, this laboratory manual is a useful reference for undergraduate students in microbiology and allied fields. The quality of this manual can be improved with better organization, structure, good quality images and figures, flow diagrams.