Making Practicals Practical: Introducing Student-Driven Experiments
Professor Simon Maddocks, Dr David Tivey, and Mr Robert Kemp
Animal Science Department
"To have real involvement and enthusiasm from students requires real questions, asked by the students themselves. This means, to some extent, promoting student ownership of the learning process."
Background | Aims | Process | Evaluation | Contact
Background
Physiology of farm animals is an undergraduate topic that was previously taught to students enrolled in two distinct degrees, based at two geographically distant and culturally very different campuses. In 1997 we made the decision to rationalise our course offerings and develop a new subject. This presented some obvious problems given the need to integrate the students from both campuses. But this also presented us with the opportunity to address greater pedagogical issues and possibilities and we decided to make a radical break with the teaching methods of the past. Principally, we wanted to rekindle student enthusiasm for learning, that is, for answering questions that they developed, using the methods they designed.
Traditionally, practical based subjects were a labour intensive and expensive way of teaching. A four hour practical would take a full day to prepare, and another to clean up. Also, the practicals were recipe driven and discouraged critical and imaginative thinking on the part of the students. The most difficult concept to impart was that individual facts are only as valuable as understanding how they work together in a system. This holistic approach was very difficult to foster in students who only needed to memorise isolated facts to pass their assessment.
As well as these educational issues, we were faced with the difficulty of integrating two student bodies from different campuses, with different expectations and a history of negative, unfounded assumptions about each other.
Aims
- To create a question driven rather than information driven course. We believed the best way to accomplish this was;
- to establish a research skills based course.
- to rationalise learning and teaching resources and time.
- to facilitate the interaction of two diverse and mildly antagonistic student groups.
- to promote student ownership of the learning process.
Process
For the first five weeks we concentrated on how to go about developing the right questions, ones that could be tackled through some research, ingenuity and application; in other words, how to frame hypotheses. We started with a question, rather than presenting information, which set the tone for the entire course. The conundrum we began with was; 'Are Men Stronger Than Women?'
In this first part of the course we took the students through the process of formulating research questions, designing appropriate tests and writing and reporting their findings. The students learned how to phrase hypotheses, read and write abstracts, design experiments, plot data and present a talk. Working in groups that we selected so as to maximise cross-campus interaction, the students were encouraged to work through their own problems with experimental design, using the lecturers and tutors as advisors to their project. We tried to keep the ownership of the thinking and working of the group as much with the students as we could and this included assessment, which was, in part, peer based.
Background material in animal physiology was delivered in lectures and tutorials. Each week the students were given a synopsis of the relevant topic matter and three to eight questions that covered the examinable material. A continuous assessment component required one nominated question each week to be answered and submitted for marking.
In the second phase of the course the student groups chose their own research area from a standard array (e.g. 'digestion', 'cardio-vascular'). Like any good research question, the students began with what they knew about the area, and formulated questions about things that puzzled them. For example, one group looking at the cardio-vascular system arrived at the question 'Is fitness dependent on blood pressure or heart rate?'. From these kinds of ruminations students began to comprehend the systemic interdependence of aspects of animal physiology.
Equipment and budgets were available for carrying out experiments, but this also created limitations; was it possible to test what they wanted to test with the materials on hand? Another benefit here was that students had to take responsibility (with strategic input when sought) for organising their own equipment requirements.
Evaluation
The results were in most respects better than we could have hoped for. The new subject was far more effective than the two subjects it replaced. The barriers between the students from different campuses were broken down, and the students showed a marked enthusiasm for learning. Students were now routinely turning to abstracts from current databases rather than out-dated textbooks for information. In the final exam for the subject the students showed a much greater capacity for systematically and precisely answering questions than the students who had learnt in previous years. A Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) evaluation confirmed that the practicals were perceived as achievable and that the students felt, in general, positively about the subject.
Comments included:
"The questions given were the source of greatest learning. Tutorials around completed questions would be valuable, I think."
Overall, the teaching staff have been encouraged by the success of the restructured subject, both in the response of students to the new format and their performance in the subject. Importantly, the decision to combine physiology teaching across the two degrees proved to be right, and little or no distinction could be made between the two groups of students on completing the subject. However, taking into account student feedback, the subject still requires some refinement. Staff will revisit the subject content and evaluate the value of the first practical in its present format, possibly replacing it with a series of "how to" exercises to better prepare students for the research based practical.
Contact
Prof Simon Maddocks can be contacted on:
Tel: +61 8 8303 7854,
Fax: +61 8 8303 7620
E-mail: simon.maddocks@adelaide.edu.au
Adelaide University, Australia 5005
Dr Dave Tivey can be contacted on:
Tel: +61 8 8303 7326,
Fax: +61 8 8303 7114
E-mail: dtivey@waite.adelaide.edu.au
Adelaide University, Australia 5005
last updated 18/04/00
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