BioScholars Assessment 2015-2016

Michael J. Hanophy

St. Joseph’s College, Brooklyn NY

PROJECT:Activating prior knowledge to improve learning

Spring Semester 2016

COURSE:BIO 340 – Microbiology

TOPIC:Microbial Metabolism

Most of our students take Microbiology (BIO 340) in the second semester of their senior year. They have already been exposed to the metabolic pathways involved in aerobic respiration, fermentation, and oxygenic photosynthesis in General Bio I (BIO 150) and possibly in Cell Biology (BIO 462) and Biochemistry (CHE 331) classes. In my upper level Microbiology class, I spend considerable time on the diverse metabolic pathways seen among the bacteria and archaea and have always tried to start my lessons with the prior knowledge of metabolism that students had from previous courses. This past year, I tried to more deliberately activate the students’ prior knowledge using diagrams and questions that they are familiar with.

FORMATIVE ASSIGNMENTS

Clearest/Muddiest Point exercises (post-lecture, GOOGLE FORMS)
Pre-test, using diagrams from Campbell’s Biology (SURVEYMONKEY)

Video Review Lessons based on Clearest/Muddiest Point Survey (PANOPTO)

ANALYSIS:

23 of 40 multiple choice questions on Examination #2 involved metabolism. Table 1 shows the scores on Examination #2 over the last five years. Score seem to be consistent over the past five years with no significant increase during 2016 with the implementation of pre-tests, clearest/muddiest point exercises and review videos.

TABLE 1 –Comparison of scores on Examination #2

YEAR
2016 / 2015 / 2014 / 2013 / 2012 / Average score
2012-2015
Patchogue Average / 79.8 / 75.3 / 77.2 / 77.5 / 78.1 / 77.0
Brooklyn Average / 76.2 / 80.4 / 71.5 / 80.0 / 77.5 / 77.3
Overall Average / 77.9 / 77.2 / 74.8 / 78.6 / 77.9 / 77.1
Overall Median / 75.5 / 77.0 / 75.0 / 80.0 / 80.0

Table 2 compares the percentage of multiple choice questions concerning microbial metabolism with questions concerning other topics. While the difference between these two groups of questions was negligible for the 33 students on our Patchogue campus, there was a slightly higher score on microbial metabolism questions for 20 students on the Brooklyn campus.

TABLE 2 – Comparison of multiple choice questions concerning microbial metabolism with other questions.

Examination #2 (2016) / Multiple choice questions concerning microbial metabolism
(% correct of 23) / Other multiple choice questions on the exam
(% correct of 17) / Comparison of microbial metabolism questions with other questions
(metabolism – other)
Patchogue / 70.6 / 70.9 / -0.3
Brooklyn / 71 / 65.3 / 2.1

CONCLUSIONS:

There appeared to be no immediate improvement in performance on the second exam after implementation of the new program. While scores on multiple choice questions concerning microbial metabolism were no better than scores on other questions for the Patchogue campus, students in Brooklyn did seem to do better on the metabolism questions. This might be because the Brooklyn students were a full week behind the Patchogue students and I might have been more effective at implementing the changes on the second try.

There is also some evidence that the videos were useful. 54 students in the course viewed the respiration video 65 times and the photosynthesis video 35 times. Several students expressed appreciation for the video reviews.