Connected Science by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press

Authentic Biology: Promoting Higher-Level Understanding

Both the team-based learning and SCALE-UP classroom approaches recognize the importance of moving the learning of basic knowledge, at the lowest two levels of Benjamin Bloom’s cognitive scale (Bloom et al., 1956), to outside of class. While basic knowledge is important, we accept the research findings on the limitations of lectures for conveying this information (Handelsman et al., 2006). Instead, we expect our students to learn the basic concepts from the text before the start of each course module. Class time then emphasizes application and analysis that promotes higher-level understanding. In both Biol2002 and Biol2003, traditional lecturing is typically less than one hour per week and is often conducted in short blocks interspersed with learning activities.

In the course, instructors engage students in distinct types of learning activities: “tangibles” (hands-on) and “ponderables” (minds-on). Biological tangibles can be divided into those most suited for a “wet” technology laboratory setting and those suited for the SCALE-UP classroom’s “dry” technology environment. Biol2002 and Biol2003 have separate wet lab sections called “research lab” that allow students to do lab-based biology. For example, students use microscopes, carry out electrophoresis, and culture bacteria. In what normally would be called “lecture,” students engage in a “concept lab,” a term borrowed from Daniel Udovic’s Workshop Biology (Udovic, 1996). Here, students work actively with data, simulations, case studies, and physical models. Ponderables—pencil-and-paper problems, discussion questions, and case studies, for instance—are also well suited for the SCALE-UP classroom where thinking like a biologist and in a team defines the learning.

In both semesters of our course, students also work on projects that span from four weeks to the entire semester. These projects provide students with the experience of doing the sustained intellectual work of a biologist. Students engage the primary literature, work collaboratively in a team at every stage, use evidence-based, persuasive scientific writing, and present their final work to peers at a poster session.

Although evaluation of projects requires carefully constructed rubrics that take significant time to develop, projects are very effective in getting students to think like scientists, to grapple with biological concepts at the highest of Bloom’s cognitive levels, and to integrate concepts from all sections of the course. For example, in the first term (Biol2002), students are charged with writing a proposal to create a genetically modified organism that would offer some social benefit. We make the semester-long project manageable by breaking it into stages on which we can give context-specific instruction, formative feedback, and a chance for interteam and interteam peer review. For the cell biology section of the Biol2003 course, the long-term project is a mini-grant proposal in which each team proposes two novel hypotheses regarding a transport protein, and designs experiments to test those hypotheses. Each team turns in a 15-page paper, excluding figures and references, organized like an actual grant proposal.

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