Bewarethegeek Goes Digital

I decided to reflect on my own experiences in science and use them as a case study to which I would apply some of the theories and frameworks I’ve been reading about in the process of doing this assignment. I am finding the theoretical aspect of this project particularly interesting because it seems to be quite disparate with my own experiences in science.

Summary:

I undertook a bachelor of science on campus from 2004-2006. The methods of teaching utilised were lectures, tutorials and laboratory sessions, with some subjects offering additional museum research components. I took subjects from a range of faculties – biology, biochemistry, immunology and infectious diseases, medicine, and pathology. The teaching style across these faculties was consistent. Each subject generally had 2-3 50 minute lectures a week and one laboratory session which ranged between 3 and 5 hours long. Not all subjects had tutorials, but those that did involved going through the answers of a tutorial worksheet which was assigned the week before.

In lectures, the format involved the lecturer standing at the podium and displaying visual content using powerpoint slides on a projector. The lecturer would speak for the entire 50 minute duration and students would take notes, generally as annotations on the print outs of the lecture. While the lecturers generally did not mind being interrupted for questions, it was very rare that a student would do so, with students preferring to see the lecturer one on one after class at the front of the lecture hall.

Laboratory sessions were usually run by a demonstrator. The amount of instruction received dependended on the subject. For example, in biology classes, there was one demonstrator per approximately fifteen students, so students received a lot of guidance and support from their demonstrators, in addition to the practical manual, which had a great deal of background information on the topic to be examined, as well as detailed, step by step instructions on how to perform the experiment at hand. Students did not often collaborate with each other as the demonstrators tended to give the answers to the students if they asked. In contrast, laboratory sessions run by the biochemistry faculty generally had two demonstrators to a group of a approximately two hundred students. Therefore, their purpose was to give a short, introductory lecture, and then oversee safety in the lab for the duration of the session. Given the large number of students, they were rarely available for assistance if required. The lab manuals in these classes did not provide as much background information as those in biology, with students expected to research and prepare before the lab. However, they still included detailed, step by step instructions of how to perform the experiments. Due to the lack of available demonstrators in these classes, students often formed their own small groups and collaborated with each other to perform the experiments successfully.

Tutorials generally did not involve a great deal of collaboration between students. Students were expected to come to class with a completed tutorial worksheet or exercise and then the tutor would ask if anyone had difficulty. Students were generally reluctant to admit in front of a class group that they had had difficulty and as such no one would speak up. Consequently, the tutorial would evolve into a lecture style, with the tutor standing at the board, going through all the problems to the class.

Museum sessions were available in subjects like pathology and anatomy to allow students to examine gross specimens and slides. These sessions usually involved following a worksheet which guided the students in making observations of a particular sample.  The students were then expected to research the observations and compare them with the textbook descriptions of similar samples. These sessions were not compulsory and as such were not facilitated by a faculty member. Like the biochemistry laboratory sessions, the students often formed small groups and collaborated in these sessions, comparing and discussing their observations.

Personally, the classes that I learnt the most from in the course of my entire degree were the biochemistry lab sessions and the museum sessions. The lack of faculty member forced us as students to think independently. It gave us the motivation to do our own research and consider a range of ideas, without being told which ideas we should place particular focus on. The disadvantage, I found, of the lecturing style of teaching, was that as a student we were told exactly what was important to learn. “This will be in the exam.” And thus the particular piece of information is committed to memory above all others. There is no opportunity or motivation to explore other ideas or concepts outside those that we knew would be assessable.

Critique

Situated learning theory is particularly applicable to the laboratory and museum sessions, especially those where students were generally left to their own devices and collaborated on results and ideas with other students. This is consistent with my (post-degree) experiences of working as a research scientist. The learning that occured in the undergraduate laboratories was engrained in the environment and culture in which it would later occur in research. Furthermore, these undergraduate laboratories helped students to develop the attitude and behaviour of research scientists, which is also applicable in later research. Furthermore, the work of Lave and Wenger and Vygotsky are also particularly applicable here – the social nature of the museum and laboratory sessions meant that learning did not occur in isolation and in many cases students formed small communities of practice.

Constructivism is harder to apply. Despite many articles to the contrary discussed in the literature review, I found it hard to find evidence of constructivism in my own science experiences, aside from, to some extent, that which went hand in hand with the situated learning which occured in the labs and museum. In lectures, students were told exactly which knowledge was important. The student’s background and previous experiences were rarely considered, to the point that if the student entered a subject without the appropriate background in relation to subject matter, they were expected to catch up in their own time – that this lack in background might affect the way they construct and understand the new knowledge they were meant to take in in the lecture was not considered.

Similarly, scaffolded knowledge integration was also difficult to apply to lectures, though with regard to the tennant of this framework which states that knowledge should be made visible, this did occur in some instances in the laboratory and museum, with students thinking aloud, or explaining their thought processes to other students to explain why they reached particular conclusions. As a student exposed to this, I found it a particularly useful method of learning from other students.

When considering Bloom’s Taxonomy it was also interesting to consider my experiences in a laboratory vs. a lecture. When it came to exams, there were usually theory and practical exams. Theory exams consisted of multipe choice and short answer questions. When I worked at the university as a demonstrator, I had to mark exams as part of my job. It was then that I learned that the exams were marked based on a particular series of keywords that need to be in the answer. Even if the answer was correct or partially correct, if the keywords were not present, the student would receive less or in some cases no marks. This sort of assessment style encourages rote-learning of content, and with regard to Bloom’s Taxonomy, does not allow the student to pass the knowledge or comprehension stages of the taxonomy. From this, it could be said that the lecture style of teaching science does not encourage higher level thinking. In contrast, students in a laboratory session are expected to take the knowledge they’ve gained in the lectures and from their own reading and apply it to the laboratory context. Furthermore, the laboratory also encourages higher levels of thinking, indicated by the final three levels of the taxonomy – analysis, synthesis and evaluation. In experimental science, students are expected to analyse their results, synthesise them into meaningful data, and evaluate the accurateness and relevance of this data, depending on the experimental context.

From the above application of theories, it appears evident that laboratory and independent research sessions such as museums are far more effective at encouraging higher level thinking and independent learning by allowing students to work collaboratively, in a situated environment. Furthermore, these environments encourage discussion, visibile thinking, in contrast to lectures, which appear to encourage lower level thinking and rote-learning of content.

~ by bewarethegeek on September 9, 2009 .