The courses I teach are typically considered by students to be content-heavy, and conceptually difficult courses (biochemistry, molecular cell biology, histology). Students in these courses must master not only a large foreign vocabulary but also become adept at using that vocabulary to structure an understanding of the cellular and biochemical nature of life. In a sense, I am teaching my students a new language, and am asking them to think and problem-solve, using that new language. To teach my students well, I need to produce a learning environment in which my students are given the opportunity to both learn and think with their new cellular and biochemical language.
In class, I use a number of different teaching strategies to achieve this. One is to model thinking like a biochemist or cell biologist. In biochemistry, for example, I will often think through aloud how to rationalize electron movement, and will subsequently ask students to identify the nucleophile and electron deficient center. Depending upon the reliability of the classroom WiFi I use Whiteboard by Splashtop on my iPad, in order to draw these electron movements, and annotate on my slideshows (Haave 2013). This has freed me from remaining fixed behind a podium with mouse and keyboard and instead enables me to circulate among the students, while still in control of my slideshow. Students have commented that they appreciate how this makes a relatively passive slideshow become somewhat more engaging. Another strategy I often use at the start of classes is to ask students to take out a blank piece of paper to practice drawing the biochemical or cellular structures they learned in the previous class or course section. Alternatively, I may ask students to discuss with their neighbours the significance of what was learned during the previous day. What this typically does is impress upon students that it is insufficient to understand the biological processes when I explain them – they must be able to pull it out of their brain on their own. In addition, I use experiments from published papers to give students experience, in-class, in assessing and interpreting experimental design and data. This addresses Augustana's campus-wide goal of inculcating in our students the ability to think critically (Adams 2003).
Students do find me to be an excellent lecturer. However, it seems to give students a false sense of confidence. They think that because they understand in class while I lecture, that they have then learned it, only to find out during a subsequent exam or quiz, that they are unable to explain it for themselves. They think that because they understand what they read, that studying and learning is complete. Yet, what they have failed to do, is internalize it for themselves, such that they are able to articulate their learning to someone else, or in response to a problem or exam question.
When I inquire of students in this situation how they have studied, I typically learn that students have engaged in what I term “pretend studying.” That is, they think that because they understood what I have explained in class, and because they can mostly understand it when they read it, that they have learned the material. But what they have failed to do is the subsequent step, which is to test themselves on a blank piece of paper without their notes, without their textbook, or to test themselves by explaining to a peer, to determine whether they have truly internalized the material to an extent that is sufficient for them to be able to explain and problem-solve without external aids (Brown et al, 2014). One of my best learning experiences happened to me during my first-year Biology course at the University of British Columbia. My instructor, Dr Lee Gass, walked into the back of the lecture theatre and observed me reading the day’s assigned chapter. After pausing behind me for a few moments, he asked what I was understanding to be the significant point on the open page. I looked at the page and then looked back at him with dawning awareness, that virtually the entire open two pages were in highlighter yellow. He advised me to throw away my highlighter and instead, read with a pencil in hand. I threw away my highlighter that day, and now often advise my students to do the same, and instead pick up a pencil to write notes in the textbook margin, or to make their own notes on a blank piece of paper. When students ask me what they can do to improve their mark, I ask about their own study strategies and often learn that they are not studying to truly learn. Rather, they think they are studying by looking at the material or the notes they made in class. I always respond when I hear this by asking if they have tested themselves (Brown et al, 2014a). Almost universally the answer is a blank look – “test myself, what do you mean?” I mean, have you, after completing your study regime, closed your books, put away your notes, and then try to write what you are supposed to know on a blank piece of paper? Can you write out the necessary formulae? Can you write out the chemical reactions? Can you draw a picture of the process or explain it in writing – without needing to look at your notes or textbook? If you can, then you are ready for the exam. If you cannot, then you have not yet learned the material. Many students find this to be a revelation that improves their own learning.
Some will suggest that this is simply encouraging rote memorization, to which I respond, of course! How else does one begin to learn a new language unless one remembers the vocabulary and the grammatical rules? But then where/how do students learn to think with the material? Ah, that is the next step. Once they have the vocabulary and rules mastered, then we can start practising using those rules to think with the material. In recent years I have turned to the instructional strategy of Team-Based Learning (TBL) (Michaelsen et al. 2004) in order to circumvent the habit of pretend studying. Team-Based Learning is one version of the flipped classroom (Berrett 2012; Lasry et al 2012) that uses active learning strategies shown to increase student success (Wieman, 2014). Similar to the flipped classroom, TBL requires students to do their textbook reading before coming to class, and writing a quiz before instructors have lectured on the material. What makes TBL an atypical flipped classroom instructional strategy, is that in-class active learning activities are done within teams established at the beginning of the term, and remain in place throughout the course. Stable teams provide students with the opportunity to practice their understanding of course material, within the relative security of peers who they come to know over the term. Thus, students must personally engage the material before coming to class preparing them for the quiz, and subsequent practice of their understanding, by applying it, with their team-mates, to problems assigned to be completed in-class. In addition, it creates an environment in which students are ready to hear what an instructor has to teach when lecturing is required (Schwartz & Bransford 1998).
I started using Team-Based Learning as an instructional strategy in 2012. I have not seen a marked improvement in student achievement on in-class exams (there is an improvement of a few percent in the class average) but that may be because I am still learning to successfully intervene with mini-lectures in areas of student confusion as suggested by student comments on the course evaluations. According to my student evaluations of instruction, I seem to be hitting the sweet-spot between active-learning and mini-lectures in my second-year biochemistry and fourth-year biology capstone courses but that sweet spot is still elusive for me in the first-year biology course I teach. Part of the difficulty is recognizing when students are having comprehension issues – students are reluctant to publicly articulate their misunderstandings in front of the entire class. I am still committed to fine-tuning my use of TBL despite the small improvement in student outcomes because I believe that that there are other skills being learned over the course of TBL; skills that we as Augustana instructors must impart to our students: thinking, researching and communicating. Researching comes with the pre-class studying; thinking and communicating are practised during team-based activities. In addition, TBL promotes the acquisition of cooperative working skills and can provide students opportunities to practice their leadership skills.
For the most part, students have responded positively to my use of TBL. But students also really like, and appreciate, my style of traditional lecturing; in a typical lecture, I present material in class and then ask students a question or problem, that either requires them to synthesize it with something they have learned earlier in the current, or in another course, or ask them to consider the significance of the knowledge by applying it to a problem. So why am I spending so much time and energy re-learning how to teach mid-career? My students seem to be happy with my teaching. Simply, I do not want my students to be surprised by a weak result on their exams when they think they have understood the material. Augustana students are intelligent people, but often they do not seem to understand the time commitment and energy required to truly master the material I am teaching. TBL provides a structure in which students are enabled to become actively engaged learners in disciplines that have traditionally relied on passive learning strategies and provides them with feedback throughout the term so that they are better able to evaluate their mastery of the course material. This helps to combat students' poor ability to assess their own abilities (Dunning et al, 2003; Brown et al 2014b).
I am also experimenting with TBL in AUBIO 230 - Molecular Cell Biology as a means of scaffolding undergraduate research into, what is typically a lecture-style, content-driven course. The applied problems that I give in-class to students in this course are chosen to give students the experience of assessing experimental design and interpreting results. I have occasionally done this in past courses, but in AUBIO 230, I have made it a focus, by having the teams work on experimental analysis each, and every week, the course runs. Experimental type questions are included in both the midterm and final exams and are worth a significant proportion of the exam. Thus, students know that the problems assigned are not simply make-work, but rather, are opportunities for them to master the ability to interpret data and analyze experimental design. In some courses, I also give students the opportunity to prepare research posters that are publicly presented at Augustana's Student Academic Conference. It is my intention that this will prepare students for, and increase their interest in, participating in the undergraduate research opportunities available at Augustana (summer research assistantships and independent studies courses).
I continue working to improve my use of TBL (Haave 2014a). In the summers of 2014 and 2016 I collaborated with a couple of students to develop a project to edit my Apps used in TBL so that they better conform to best practices which follow the 4S framework of TBL: in-class apps are significant to students, all teams attempt the same problem, require a specific choice made by the team, and the choices reported simultaneously. The project was funded by a grant from our university's Centre for Teaching and Learning and I began implementing the new apps this year in AUBIO/AUCHE 280 and will continue next year in AUBIO 230. One modification I have made to the method of having teams hold up coloured cards to indicate their answer choice is to instead use Plickers to simultaneously record the team choices. This has the benefits of making team choices public, recording the choice if the particular app is for marks, and is a low-tech inexpensive alternative to iClickers. Instead of students or institutions being required to purchase a student response unit or smartphone software, students are instead issued QR codes printed on cards which are read by the instructor's smartphone or tablet with the results immediately displayed on the classroom screen similar to other personal response systems.
Classes in which group-work is a component are always in danger of suffering from students who do not contribute to the work, relying instead on others to do the difficult tasks or thinking: a problem known as social loafing (Seidel & Tanner, 2013). Conversely, group-work can also be sabotaged by students unwilling to relinquish control of the learning process, refusing the contributions from their colleagues. To circumvent this, I have students provide an evaluation of their peers regarding the quality, and quantity, of their contribution (Michaelsen & Sweet, 2011). I have used peer evaluation in courses in which Team-Based Learning is the teaching strategy (AUBIO 130, 230 & 380), and also in AUBIO 411, in which many of the class meetings involve discussion of the day's reading. Examples of the peer evaluation forms I use are available in the artifacts section of my e-portfolio.
Another method of encouraging engaged, active learning by students is weekly writing. In the 1990s, I attended a critical thinking conference, led by Dr Richard Paul, in which frequent writing was advocated as a method for inculcating in students the ability to think critically (Menary 2007, Rockquemore 2010). For his classes, Dr Paul required students to always bring to class a short written summary of the day’s reading. At the workshop, many participants were surprised that students were not more resistant to this instructional expectation to cause this instructional strategy to fail. Dr Paul asserted that, if the writing requirement is clearly laid out at the beginning of the term, and enforced, students quickly adjust. Thus, in AUBIO 411 – History and Theory of Biology, I assign my students a two-page typed reflection on the day’s reading. This is a version of the flipped classroom because the course structure requires students to read before coming to lecture. To enforce this requirement, I stamp every student’s daily writing, which is then used as their admission ticket to the class. Students who have not completed the writing assignment I ask to proceed to the library to complete their assignment, upon which I will admit them to the class. Just as Dr Paul asserted, there is resistance during the first couple of weeks of classes, but after observing that I enforce the requirement, students take up the task. In addition to encouraging weekly writing, and thus, active engagement with the assigned reading, this also enables students to come prepared to discuss the reading in the groups that form. Students do find it difficult, but that is because thinking is difficult and writing is thinking (Haave 2015).
A fertile learning environment enables students to anticipate, and plan for, the many requirements and expectations in the different courses of their term. This requires that instructors inform students of the daily structure of the course for the ensuing weeks. This requires a course syllabus that clearly details the course objectives, topics, exams and quiz dates enabling students to plan their academic life over the coming months. In addition, for each lecture/course topic, I provide students with the learning objectives, key terms, text pages, and suggested practice problems. These act as reading guides which are critical to student success for courses in which TBL is the instructional strategy. The difficulty with producing a good reading guide is finding the correct balance between leading students, yet at the same time allowing students to discover and construct their own knowledge. Consistent with a constructivist understanding of learning, I believe that deeper learning occurs when students earn their knowledge rather than simply receiving knowledge from their instructor (Weimer, 2013a). This is why it bothers me when students ask for a copy of my lecture notes. Providing students with my notes is giving them knowledge without students needing to earn their knowledge. This circumvents their ability to integrate their new learning with what they already know (Weimer 2013b).
Instructors teaching within a liberal arts context are interested in teaching the whole student, and thus, must address many different skills while teaching and designing their courses (Weimer 2012). In addition to the course content, we must also attend to disciplinary skills, more general academic skills, and metacognitive skills (Young & Fry 2008). Metacognitive skills are the reflective skills that students need to employ in order to consider how they are performing as a student. This raises issues of how they study, whether or not that learning strategy works, and therefore whether a change is necessary. These all consider one’s learning philosophy. We often discuss our teaching philosophies, but we rarely discuss our learning philosophy (Haave 2014b & 2014c). How do we think we learn? Why do we think that works? Why do we think that is best for us? Have we even thought about this?
To encourage students to be reflective about their learning, I have used an e-portfolio in my AUBIO 230 class using Google Sites. For this learning portfolio, I had students post assignments completed for the class that illustrate their facility with communication, thinking, and researching. This required students to consider how the artefact demonstrates their ability, and to also consider what improvements might be required to improve their skills. I was pleased to find that the assignment positively impacted student learning outcomes (Haave, 2016) and have since used e-portfolios in our biology capstone course, AUBIO 411 - History and Theory of Biology. My goal is to eventually have e-portfolios be available to students as an alternate assignment in all of my courses.
In AUBIO 230, I provide a service-learning assignment as an alternative to the learning portfolio. While not a service-learning assignment in the strictest sense (Santas 2009), it does provide senior students with an opportunity to help students in our first-year labs under the supervision of the lab instructor for the particular course. From both the reflective assignment and student comments from the end of term lab evaluation, it appears that both sets of students are finding this to be an educationally useful experience. The first-year students find it comfortable to ask the service-learning students questions in the lab, and the service-learning students find they experience an opportunity to explore their own learning and teaching styles, including reflection upon their ease and ability to interact with other students in a leadership situation.
In the artifacts link to the above left, I have posted examples of material I provide to help my students master the concepts and material I teach. I make extensive use of our learning management system, Moodle, in making these materials available online. Preliminary studies suggest that this practice can improve student performance (Weimer 2013c). In addition, for a number of courses (e.g. first-year biology, biochemistry, histology) I provide online practice quizzes that are a low stakes (worth only a few % of the course mark) method of encouraging students to keep up with their studying. When I use TBL, these quizzes are part of the Readiness Assurance Process that occur in class, at the beginning of a course section. I have tried delivering online quizzes in-class using Respondus Lockdown Browser (RLB) with the Moodle quizzing function with varying degrees of success. I use RLB to deliver the quiz in order to circumvent the possibility of googling answers. The advantage of using the Moodle quiz function to deliver an in-class quiz is immediate analytics that Moodle provides instructors, allowing immediate assessment of where student confusion is occurring. I write to varying degrees of success because our present wireless hardware is inconsistent in its ability to handle simultaneous users in large classes, resulting in students occasionally losing internet access during their quiz, producing a stressed learning environment for students. Thus, because the power of immediate feedback on student learning is substantial (Epstein et al 2002), I continue to use IF-AT forms. I also use Moodle to post, or link to, useful animations and websites that may aid student comprehension, and mastery, of the course material.
Literature cited
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