Narrative Report
1. College: College of Alameda
Department: Biology
Date 10-24-07
Team Members: Ann Kircher, Helena Lengel, Reza Majlesi, John Steiner
2. Description of the Discipline:
· The goals of the Biology Department are as follows: 1. To prepare Biology Majors to transfer into 4 year programs in Biology, and Health Sciences (Nursing, Pharmacy, Physical Therapy, Physician’s Assistant). 2. To prepare students with Bachelor’s Degrees for entry into Professional Schools (Medicine, Dentistry). 3. To offer courses that satisfy the physical and life sciences requirements for transfer into 4 year institutions in majors other than Biology and the Health Sciences. 4. To offer courses to satisfy the Natural Sciences Requirement for an A.A. Degree.4. To offer courses for Continuing Education requirements in the health professions. 5. To contribute to the continuing education of members of the community.
· The degree currently offered by the Biology Department is an A.A. degree with a Biology Major.
· Trends affecting Biology include a growing job market in the Health Professions, as well as a growing Biotechnology sector in the work force.
As the impact of humans on the environment grows, there may be a growing
need for environmental education.
· The Biology Department anticipates an increase in course offerings, both number of sections as well as types of offerings. New courses to be offered would include: Microbiology with a lab, Genetics, Human Sexuality, Anatomy and Physiology (one semester course) Environmental Studies. In the next three years these would necessitate:
o Two more full-time Instructors
o One more full-time Laboratory Preparator
o Laboratory equipment for a Microbiology Course
o Extra laboratory supplies for more sections of Anatomy, and Physiology
· Laboratory equipment for Environmental Studies, field studies as well as lab studies.
3. Curriculum:
Is the curriculum current and effective? Have course outlines been updated within the last three years? If not, what plans are in place to remedy this?
The biology curriculum covers General Biology for both majors and nonmajors, along with ancillary courses which include Human Anatomy, Human Physiology, Nutrition, Ecology, and Human Sexuality. Students with particular interests outside of these biological subjects may enroll in Independent Study and/or Selected Topics courses.
Many course outlines have been updated within the last three years. Biology 1-A,-B, Biology 10, Biology 11, Biology 18, Biology 19, and Biology 26 were all updated in 2006-2007. Biology 12A and 12B, Biology 14, Biology 27 and Biology 31 all need updating. The Biology Department plans to update these course outlines in 2008.
Has your department conducted a curriculum review of the course outlines? If not, what are the plans to remedy this?
The department has conducted a curriculum review of the course outlines. The Curriculum Committee has approved the updates of the aforementioned course outlines.
What are the Department’s plans for curriculum improvement (i.e. courses to be developed, updated, enhanced, or deactivated)? Have prerequisites, co-requisites, and advisories been validated? Is the date of validation on the course outline?
The General Biology courses (Biology 1A, 1B, 10 and 11) need to be improved to include DNA technology, so as to acquaint students with the cutting edge of biological research. In addition, subcellular studies should be conducted in Biology 1A. Training and equipment will be necessary to bring the Biology Department to currency.
Two anatomy and physiology courses will be developed to enhance training of health-science students. Five-unit courses will replace the 4-unit Biology 18 and 19 series. The Department is presently working with faculty at Merritt College to adapt Biology 2 and Biology 4 course outlines. In addition, a combined, 5-unit, one-semester course combining anatomy and physiology should be offered to train future licensed vocational nurses. As part of course development, prerequisites, co-requisites and advisories will be validated.
The prerequisites for Biology 1-A, -B have been validated and appear on the current course outlines.
What steps has the department taken to incorporate student learning outcomes in the curriculum? Are outcomes set for each course? If not , which courses do not have outcomes?
Student learning outcomes have been incorporated into Biology 1B, Biology 10, Biology 18, Biology 19 and Biology 26. Preparation of SLOs is underway for Biology 1A, Biology 11, Biology 27, and Biology 31.
Describe the efforts to develop outcomes at the program level. In which ways do these outcomes align with the institutional outcomes?
Student learning outcomes were written, or are being written, to be completely compatible with outcomes at the program level. These outcomes are perfectly parallel with College of Alameda’s outcomes.
Recommendations and priorities
Course outlines and student learning outcomes must be completed for all courses. This is a number-one priority, and work proceeds rapidly. Major purchases of capital equipment will be needed for Biology 1A and 10, Human Anatomy, Human Physiology, and Microbiology. Training for faculty must accompany the equipment purchase.
Describe the department’s efforts in meeting with and collaborating with local 4-year institutions. Is the program adequately preparing students for upper division course work? How do you know?
There have been formal, collaborative meetings with local 4-year institutions and community colleges in the past; however, it would be useful to have these again. Faculty from the Biology Department do teach, or have recently taught, at several local 4-year colleges and universities, and are therefore familiar with necessary expertise for transferring students. We are also familiar with success rates of our transferring students at some of their new institutions; this success rate is no-doubt correlated with preparation at College of Alameda. District records do not always reflect these success rates due to problems with tracking students after they’ve left PCCD.
4. Instruction:
Describe effective and innovative strategies used by faculty to involve students in the learning process. How has new technology been used by the department to improve student learning?
In our department we frequently use the following five models of learning to engage student in the learning process:
A. Dialogue with Self:
We encourage learners to think reflectively about a topic, i.e., they ask themselves what they think about the topic. In appropriate circumstances, the instructor asks students to write about what they are learning, and how this knowledge plays a role in the class and their future careers.
B. Dialogue with Others:
In traditional teaching, when students read a textbook or listen to a lecture, they are "listening to" another person (teacher, book author). This can perhaps be viewed as "partial dialogue" but it is limited because there is no back-and-forth exchange. In the Biology department, our faculty use a much more dynamic and active form of dialogue. When it is appropriate, we create a small group discussion on a topic. Sometimes teachers create this dialogue by email or discussion board on line.
C. Observing:
Our faculty very actively engages students with “observation”. This occurs whenever a learner watches or listens to someone else "Doing" something that is related to what they are learning about. This occurs during lab when the instructor may perform a task live, when students may watch related movies, and then perform the experiment or study themselves.
Doing:
In Biology classes, we require student to perform tasks themselves.
Problem-Based Learning:
Lastly, we are all advocates of Problem-Based Learning. In appropriate circumstances, we start with posing a real problem for students to work on, and then having students consult with each other on how best to proceed in order to find a solution to the problem.
In the Biology department there is a trend towards using technology; from using power point slides, and animation video clips to using the internet. We submitted a request to purchase computers and various soft ware for our lab to bring more technology-based teaching to our department.
· How does the department maintain the integrity and consistency of academic standards within the discipline.
In our Biology department we hold department meetings regularly. We all make sure to follow the course outline very closely. Regular class observation of part-timers while including them in our meetings, as well as monitoring our class objectives, are means to maintain our academic standards within the discipline.
· Discuss the enrollment trends of your department. What is the student demand for specific courses? How do you know? What do you think are the salient trends affecting enrollments?
Obviously our enrollment has had a significant increase since year 2000. The number of Anatomy sections increased from 4/year in 2000 to 9/year in 2007. The number of Physiology sections has increased from 4/year in 2000 to 9/year in 2007. The number of Introductory Biology Sections has increased from 8/year in 2000 to 11/year in 2007. The students’ demands are very consistent with the nursing shortage in California. We are expecting the same trend and even stronger enrollment in future years (see recommendation discussion)
· Are courses scheduled in a manner that meets students’ needs and demands? How do you know?
In the Biology department we offer a variety of courses during different days of a the week and different times of the day to meet the needs of our students. We even offer some coursed during weekends. These classes are all fully enrolled.
· Recommendation and priorities:
The trend of increasing the number of students in our department is consistent with the “Nursing Shortage Report Card Released by California Institute for Nursing & Health Care” which states, “California is lagging behind the nation”. The “California Board of Registered Nursing Annual School Report” shows that the nursing shortage in California is worse now than it was in 2000 in terms of the number of working RNs per capita. (As of April 2005, there are 539 full-time-equivalent RNs per 100,000 populations, compared to 544 per capita in 2000.) The supply of RNs has not kept pace with population growth. The report concludes that the only plausible solution to the RN shortage appears to be continued efforts to increase the number of grads from California nursing programs.”
Knowing that there is a strong demand on nursing programs we suggest adding other courses which are necessary for our students to take before they transfer to four year school including, Microbiology, Human Heredity and Genetics, Human Sexuality. Also, due to a shortage of RN’s, there are strong trends in local hospitals to use more and more LVN’s to fill their positions. For this reason we suggest to either offer courses need for our students like Anatomy and Physiology combined (one semester) or even opening an LVN program here in COA.
5. Student Success: (data derived from Fall 2003 through Spring 2005)
· Student Retention and Program Completion:
o Bio1-A: retention 70%, success 70%
o Bio 1-B. retention 81%, success 83%
o Bio 10: retention 76%, success 58%
o Bio 11: retention 65%, success 45%
o Bio 18: retention 68%. Success 65%
o Bio 19: retention 79%, success 89%
o Bio 31: retention 86%, success 73%
· To improve retention and completion rates, the department could increase the units in Bio 18 and Bio 19 to 5 semester units from 4 semester units, and prerequisites of English and math competencies could be instituted.
· Key needs of students are improvement in basic skills and study skills. To achieve this the following is needed:
o Tracking of students to determine that basic skills are in place
o Tracking of students to determine that study skills are in place
· The instructional support needs are to have counselors who track and counsel students as above. In this respect it would be extremely helpful to have one counselor whose sole area of advising would be the sciences; this person would work in close cooperation with the biology faculty.
· Methods of assessing student learning at the department level include:
o Giving exams
o Requiring lab reports and worksheets
o Oral reports
o Independent projects
o Essay writing
· Recommendations and Priorities include:
o Hiring a second full time lab preparator
o Hiring two new full time instructors
· Acquiring funding for expanded laboratory course offerings
· Having a counselor dedicated to advising science students
6. Human and Physical Resources (including ewuipment and facilities)
· Describe your current level of staff, including full-time and part-time faculty, classified staff, and other categories of employment.
The COA biology department currently has three full-time faculty and 6 part-time faculty. In addition, the department has one full-time science lab technician. This faculty and technician load is supplemented by student assistants which fluctuate from zero to three depending on funding and student availability.
· Describe your current utilization of facilities and equipment.
The COA biology department currently operates out of three primary classrooms with labs, one primary lab prep room, three storage rooms, two faculty offices, one lab office, and one mini computer lab.
· Are the human and physical resources, including equipment and location, adequate for all the courses offered by your department (or program)? What are your key staffing and facilities needs for the next three years? Why?
Human resources
Human resources are barely adequate for the biology programs. Additional part-time faculty for Spring ’08 will be required to cover the six lab classes that have been added. In addition, pending curriculum committee approval, Bio 18 (Anatomy) and Bio 19 (Physiology) are being increased from 4 units to 5 units (Bio 2 & 4), which will put additional pressure on our full-time faculty loads. Also under department consideration is the addition of the following new courses: Microbiology (without lab) and Genetics. These will be forwarded to the curriculum committee as soon as the program outlines are completed. Other new courses are being considered such as Anatomy & Physiology in one semester, Environmental Studies, a Study Skills Course focused on Science, an Introduction to Natural Science class, a Science Survey course, a series of Green Biology classes that would tie into our automotives program (biodiesel/alternative fuels, etc), a Ranger/Naturalist program, Bioinformantics, and more. Our possibilities are currently limited by the lack of additional lab space for other new programs such as Cell and Molecular Biology, Micro with lab, etc. All of these programs will require an increase in both the full-time faculty and part-time faculty contingent.