Assignment 2 – Reading Reflections
Ana Maria Barral
National University, Costa Mesa, CA
Of the many statements that jumped at me during the reading of the materials, one by Randy Bass was particularly relevant for me: “the discourse surrounding the scholarship of teaching...will be (a discourse) based on disciplinary protocols of investigative practice calibrated to the idioms of particular campus and institutional cultures.”
This quote touches on several aspects of my “problems”: they are not only related to the teaching of biological sciences, but also reside within a rather unique, accelerated method of instruction that is one of the defining characteristics of my university and hence of my teaching. This compressed but very focused method of instruction is a necessary context when I discuss my scholarship. Moreover, it becomes part of my “problem” and by embracing it as part of the research it provides additional potential to enhance the knowledge of learning. My main problem, therefore, could be summarized as: “How to achieve deep learning of basic biological concepts and skills in accelerated undergraduate courses?”
These problems originated from the “what works” question perspective (per Pat Hutchings’ taxonomy). Similar to Randy Bass, I have struggled with unhappy students (both in courses taught by me or by instructors I supervise), and tried to implement novel approaches that would result in better student learning. Here of course, enters the next issue: how do we know what works? And what does “to work,” mean in the learning process? I come from a laboratory research background where variables are easy to control, and experiments could be repeated multiple times in identical settings, Education research is very different for its personal and ethical aspects as well as its relative lack of control. To learn more about research methodologies in the scholarship of teaching is one of my main goals of this residency.
“What works” has however slowly started to move towards “what is.” The defining moment for this took place in the summer of 2013. I had been teaching a course of anatomy-physiology, and emboldened by new knowledge and resources, I included a number of hands-on in-class activities to practice difficult concepts. In the pursuit of deep understanding of physiological concepts I drove some of my students literally to tears. I was mystified. A week later I was fortunate to participate in a bioinformatics workshop that supposedly did not require previous bioinformatics knowledge. However, I was not familiar with the system of reference (fruit flies), and was overrun with a deluge of information I could not absorb. I had several “deer in the headlights” moments, struggled mightily to follow the lectures and practice sessions, and finally understood what my students had gone through.
“What is” not something I have addressed as an action item in my scholarship yet. It is something I think about a lot, reflect on, and discuss with my colleagues. Carl Wieman talks about the “curse of knowledge” and how hard it is for experts to understand the thinking of novices. Eric Mazur started on his peer-learning journey when he realized how shallow the physics knowledge of many students was in a traditional classroom. After that summer of 2013 I followed some of the tenets in Bass’ writing (without having read him), such as focusing on the aspects I considered most important for longer time, and being more intentional with my teaching. I also decided to prune the course content, removing information that “has always been taught” but did not add much to the important aspects of the class.
But for now my main interest is still how to assess student learning and evaluate teaching effectiveness as the two sides of the same coin. The former is subject to many uncontrolled parameters, from student previous knowledge to personalities and learning styles, resulting in the same intervention having variable effects. Yes, there are times I miss the uniform nature of cell lines or inbred mouse strains! As for the second, I feel this is where larger data sets and statistics may provide answers beyond the realm of anecdotal evidence.
When reading articles about new teaching approaches I am sometimes reminded of clinical trials of new drugs. A small pilot with a carefully selected patient population and under heavy monitoring results in statistically significant benefits. The same drug, used in large multi-institutional trials in the general population, struggles to replicate the effect. This aspect is something I would like to discuss during the residency. While teaching scholarship can be done at small case, and as an ongoing, iterative process, has a positive and enriching effect on teaching per se, how to expand (shall we say “scale up”) so we achieve convincing data for publication and grant purposes?
Jennifer Brigati
Maryville College, Maryville, TN
The primary “research problem” I plan to focus on during the Biology Scholars Program Research Residency is related to student attitudes toward, and engagement with, active learning techniques. The SOTL literature clearly indicates that active learning helps students to master content, and preliminary data collected by my research mentor indicates that certain types of active learning increase students’ self-reported engagement in the biology classroom, but the reality is that many student don’t like active learning. Is there a way that we can get these students to have a better attitude toward active learning? If students are given explicit instruction on the value of active learning, will they be more engaged in class when active learning techniques are used?
To address my “problem” I know that I will need to use a variety of types of data, some of which will be qualitative. As a scientist, the transition to using qualitative data is difficult, and I appreciated the line in the Rowland and Myatt article, “perhaps the most wrenching transition that a natural scientist will have to complete as they move into SoTL is the switch from a positivist, reductionist, and realist outlook to one that allows for context-constructed realities.” I also think the idea of “triangulation” (collecting at least three different types of data to see if they all point to the same conclusion) as discussed in the Classroom Action Research (Mettetal) paper is one that I will use as I plan my methods. While this is certainly something I’ve done in my bench research projects, I had never heard the term “triangulation” before reading this article. Another theme that I noticed in several of the articles was an emphasis on using your own classes for your SoTL projects; this concerns me somewhat because my project will not be in my own classroom, or even at my own institution. That said, my research mentor has a strong rapport with the faculty in the program where I will be completing this research project, and we won’t be asking the faculty to change their teaching practices in any way, so I’m hopeful to avoid the pitfalls mentioned in the Rowland and Myatt article.
I think my research question is a “what works” question. We know that active learning works, but we want to know “what works” to improve student attitudes about active learning and to improve their engagement in class when active learning techniques are used. This could morph into a “visions of the possible” project in the future, once we know if telling the students about the benefits of active learning “works” to improve their attitude.
I found that these reading selections made me feel inspired, but also a bit nervous. I am making this transition to become a SFES (science faculty with education specialties) because at my teaching-intensive institution it is difficult to maintain a productive bench-science research program, and I love research too much to give it up. While my Dean and Division Chair are extremely supportive, some of my colleagues definitely look down on SoTL as a “lesser” form of research. I think it will be very important for me to build a network of peers and mentors while I am on my sabbatical this year, so that I will have a support system as I continue SoTL activities at my institution upon my return.
Natalia Caporale
San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA
The problem that I am interested could be phrased as “Can/What metacognitive interventions aimed at improving the accuracy of student perception of their own knowledge and understanding as well as their learning process improve their performance in biology science courses?”
This question has at least two sub-items that I plan to explore:
- What interventions are effective at increasing students’ awareness of their own knowledge and learning processes?
- What elements of such interventions might be more effective for different student groups? I am particularly interested in exploring variants that might work best for different types of underrepresented minorities, with the hope of increasing self-efficacy and retention.
As I was reading the 4 articles, certain topic resonated: (1) Conducting research on topics that you are passionate about and that resonates with you. (2) Identifying a field/sub area to focus efforts on that is aligned with your institutions’ goals. As someone trained in neuroscience and the biological mechanisms of learning and memory, exploring students’ understandings of how we learn and how students use this to guide their own study process is close to my heart. As a Latino woman, raised in Argentina for most of my life, I am particularly interested in exploring how culture and ethnic background affect this process. Given the large percentage of Hispanic students at my university, I hope that my research will help my department better understand their struggles and ways in which we can improve their chances of success in the college studies.
While reading, I also recognized that given my newness to the field, I should start small and maybe consider running a CAR project (new term I just learnt!) before trying to look at something as complex as my original idea.
Looking at Pat Hutchings taxonomy, I struggled somewhat to fit my question into just one. Part of it fits into the category “what works,” as I want to explore different kinds of metacognitive interventions, while part of it is “what is” as I want to know how their own understanding of the learning process affects their learning. In many ways, my question is more than one and I know it will need to be parsed into smaller items to be able to explore them in a rigorous manner.
One of the things that resonated with me as I read most of the articles was: “Yes! That is me. I want to do this but I feel so lost as to how to start, where to start. How do I do this properly?” I must admit that I felt somewhat relieved to see so many of my questions being discussed as common issues of people starting in this field, and gave me hope. In particular, I found the paper by Rowland and Myatt incredibly helpful.
Pratima Darr
Georgia Gwinnett College, Lawrenceville, GA
The problem that most compels me is investigation of the means for increasing buy-in for active learning and establishing that this increases performance on major collaborative assignments like group presentations and papers. An approach that speaks to me is repeated exposure to the “growth mindset versus fixed mindset” paradigm advanced by Dweck, with assessment of its acceptance among students. The level of acceptance could be mapped to the grade earned on a group presentation. In the context of my focus course, internationalized biology II for non-majors, this correlation would be sought with regard to their grade on the capstone presentation that is 20% of the course grade. I also plan to use questionnaires that address effectiveness according to students and a pre and post exposure to the widely employed student assessment of their learning gains (SALG). These varied sources can offer the triangulation that is necessary to effective Classroom Action Research according to Mettetal.
Major themes from the Bass paper that resonated with my problem and vision have to do with students’ desire “to appear knowledgeable” or learning to perform to expectations and the need from the teaching standpoint, to start from day 1 addressing what students already know or believe with regard to the discipline/subject matter. The idea of the importance of finding problems worth investigation as opposed to necessarily solving problems is also one I found compelling. Based on these impressions, I was inspired to create my own specific learning goals for my focus course as opposed to the school-mandated learning outcomes and to define the one that I would prioritize over others and then channel more effort in to that. Since my focus class involves non-majors in an internationalized biology class it is clear to me that working toward the advancement of citizen science has to be my top priority. This goal is one that I feel can be extended even to the teaching of biology majors though perhaps, not as much could be done with it without sacrificing essential content.
I feel that my problem and/or approach is at the intersection of “what is”, “what works” and “visions of the possible” as elaborated by Pat Hutchings. The “what is” element connects to my perception of student resistance to active learning; and the “what works” relates to the use of a particular strategy to address this resistance. The “visions of the possible”, I see, as my desire to create identification among students with their role in the context of the course towards their development of a sense of being citizen scientists.
As an SFE, I’m not worried about acceptance, as my institution is one that is focused primarily on teaching. What I’m more worried about is the implementation of my classroom action research. As a relative newcomer to SoTL, I face some of the same issues as colleagues at more research-centered institutions with regard to making a paradigm shift in defining and designing research. That being said, the assigned papers helped immensely with regard to creating a foundation and providing resources. I am at a point where I need to go up for promotion next year but have had no publications to my name in many years. The readings provided me with ideas for journals to look in to, to get published relatively quickly.