Tuesday 1 August 2023

Flipped classroom effectiveness impacted by attendance

This is an interesting article:

Buhl-Wiggers, J., la Cour, L. & Kjærgaard, A.L. Insights from a randomized controlled trial of flipped classroom on academic achievement: the challenge of student resistance. Int J Educ Technol High Educ 20, 41 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-023-00413-6

What the authors found was that flipping the classroom did have a positive impact on student academic achievement but that the effect was insignificant until they controlled for student attendance. Those who attended class benefited from flipping the classroom relative to those students who attended a traditional lecture class. 

The study tried to understand the impact on attendance and what they found in the qualitative portion of the study was that some students in the flipped classroom relative to the traditional class skipped class as a means of resisting the non-traditional approach to teaching and learning. Student interviews indicated that reasons for not attending the flipped class were because they were reticent to engage with peers that they did not know and resented the apparent decreased contact with their instructor. In a traditional class there is the apparent sense that the instructor is speaking to you even though they are really speaking to a mass and not you individually. I have read of this response to active learning before in the SoTL literature.

So, flipping the classroom does improve student academic achievement, but only if students attend class. This makes sense as the benefits of flipping the classroom can only be realized if students are in class. What is more interesting for me is the reasons for students not attending class. It seems to me that the primary reasons students give for resisting a flipped classroom approach are addressed by Team-Based Learning. The key is to have stable teams such that students develop a learning community in which they feel safe to risk learning. In addition, I think it is key that instructors well-explain the reasons for flipping the classroom and applying active learning in the classroom at the very start of the term and then reiterate those reasons throughout the term. It is critical that students understand our rationale for why we teach the way we teach so that they realize that we have their best interests at heart.

I know I sound like a broken record but many of the issues that instructors and students face with active learning strategies such as the flipped classroom, seem to me to be addressed by Team-Based Learning.

Resources

Finelli, C. J., Nguyen, K., DeMonbrun, M., Borrego, M., Prince, M., Husman, J., Henderson, C., Shekhar, P., & Waters, C. K. (2018). Reducing student resistance to active learning: Strategies for instructors. Journal of College Science Teaching, 47(5), 80–91.

Lemelin C, Gross CD, Bertholet R, Gares S, Hall M, Henein H, Kozlova V, Spila M, Villatoro V, Haave N. 2021. Mitigating student resistance to active learning by constructing resilient classrooms. Bioscene: Journal of College Biology Teaching, 47(2): 3-9.

Smith, G. A. (2008). First-day questions for the learner-centered classroom. The National Teaching & Learning Forum, 17(5), 1–4.


Tuesday 7 June 2022

2nd-year biochemistry in winter 2021

Introduction

This is the fifth and final instalment of my reflections on my experience with online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic of the 2020/21 academic year. This reflection considers the course AUBIO/AUCHE 280 - Biochemistry: Proteins, Enzymes & Energy which I taught in the winter term of 2021. Links to my previous reflections may be found at this link here.

I have taught Biochemistry: Proteins, Enzymes & Energy a total of 23 times since 1994 on the Augustana Campus of the University of Alberta.  The Augustana Campus is the rural undergraduate liberal arts and sciences campus of a large research university whose primary campus (among five) is in Edmonton, the capital of Alberta. Edmonton is an hour northwest of Camrose where the Augustana Campus is located. Augustana has a small student population (1100) relative to the rest of the university (40,000).

AUBIO/AUCHE 280 is the first of two biochemistry courses that we teach on the Augustana campus. This first biochemistry course reviews the chemical properties of water upon which students are able to build an understanding of amino acid behaviour within cells and as components of proteins. This is critical for students to understand the properties of enzymes and how they are able to regulate metabolism. The course then uses these principles of enzyme regulation to explore the central pathways of cellular metabolism: glycolysis, citric acid cycle, and oxidative phosphorylation. The second biochemistry course we teach at Augustana is AUBIO/AUCHE 381 - Biochemistry: Intermediary Metabolism which picks up where AUBIO/AUCHE 280 ended by completing the exploration of cellular metabolism: gluconeogenesis, pentose phosphate pathway, and the metabolism of lipids, amino acids, and nucleotides. 

My reflection on teaching biochemistry during the winter 2021 term relies on my own personal experience, students' feedback from the end of term student ratings of instruction (SRI), the SoTL literature I have read, and advice that I have received from my colleagues. These are the four lenses that Stephen Brookfield (2017) advocates should inform any critical reflection of teaching:

  • students' eyes
  • colleagues' perceptions
  • personal experience of the instructor
  • theory (the SoTL literature)

Methods & Materials

The course syllabus for the Winter 2021 iteration of AUBIO/AUCHE 280 is available at this link here. Briefly, students' grades were based on two midterm exams (20% each), a final exam (35%), a video assignment (10%) and homework (15%) that was assigned through the Achieve website that accompanied the required textbook for this course, Biochemistry, 9/e by Berg et al (2019). The video assignment consisted of students providing a recorded voice-over of animations that lacked sound which explained particular biochemical phenomena being studied in the course. The assignment of Achieve homework was a new course requirement implemented for the first time in 2021.

In this blog post, I use the SRIs (student ratings of instruction) that I received that term as the lens of students' experiences placing them in the context of others I have received over the years. I have posted the details of Augustana's SRIs in a previous blog post linked here. Note that the student comments below in the Results section are in response to four open-ended questions inviting students to type their comments into our online SRI survey:

  • What aspects of the course and/or instructor did you find most valuable?
  • What aspects of the course and/or instructor did you find least valuable?
  • How useful were the course textbook(s) and/or other learning support materials?
  • Please add any other comments that you would like to make about the course and/or instructor.
Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test for significant differences among the cohorts of students. If ANOVA detected a difference of statistical significance (𝛼 = 0.05) in the response to the SRI prompt, then the Tukey-Kramer post-hoc test was used to determine if there were significant differences between cohort pairs.

Results

Over the years students have fairly consistently rated this course and how I teach it very well. There are a couple of statistically significant differences indicated for the cohorts in winter 2018 and 2021 that I note in the results below.

Students' perceptions of the instructor

Instructor overall

Students in my biochemistry class have consistently well-rated my excellence as an instructor (mean = 4.4). ANOVA did not find any significant differences among the different cohorts of students (𝛼 = 0.05). 

Related student comments:
  • Dr. Haave was always willing to answer questions related to the course material.
  • The instructor overall was excellent
  • Dr. Haave is a great instructor and very knowledgeable! I enjoy taking his classes!

Instructor preparedness
Students in my biochemistry class have consistently highly rated how well I had prepared the course (mean = 4.7). ANOVA did not find any significant differences among the different cohorts of students (𝛼 = 0.05). 
Related student comments
  • [I found most valuable to be the] course video
  • I liked that all the asynchronous lectures were posted at the start of the semester so that if I had a busy week coming I could get ahead before hand.
  • I found this course to be very well planned and the instructor was very helpful.

Instructor's effective use of contact time
Students have consistently rated my use of class time (changed to contact time starting in 2021) as being very effective (mean = 4.4). However, ANOVA did detect differences with the Tukey-Kramer post-hoc test indicating that W2021 is significantly lower from cohorts W2006 to F2012 and W2020 (α = 0.05). 

Related student comments:
  • [The team apps] can help fix loose ends you may have or point out important concepts.

The instructor communicated effectively
Biochemistry students have consistently rated highly my effective communication (mean = 4.6). ANOVA did detect significant differences among the cohorts. Tukey-Kramer indicates that W2018 is significantly lower than all other cohorts except W2006, W2017, W2019 & W2021 (α = 0.05). This prompt was worded differently prior to fall 2020 (the instructor spoke clearly).

Related student comments:
  • One of the problems I personally had (might be a me problem exclusively) is that trying to make correlations to other fields was sometimes difficult, but the breakdown Dr Haave would give made it easy to understand in hindsight.

Instructor's constructive feedback
Students in AUBIO/AUCHE 280 consistently highly rate my constructive feedback (mean = 4.2). ANOVA did not find any significant differences among the different cohorts of students (𝛼 = 0.05). 

Related student comments:
  • I liked the use of achieve and the homework assignments
  • [I found most valuable the] Achieve website quizzes.
  • [I found most valuable the] 2 stage exam
  • I liked the homework assignments and thought they were good practice.
  • The textbook and achieve website were very useful in this course.
Instructor's respectful treatment of students
Students have consistently appreciated my respectful treatment of them (mean = 4.6). ANOVA did detect significant differences among the cohorts with the Tukey-Kramer post-hoc test finding that the F2008 cohort significantly rated me lower (mean = 4) compared to all other cohorts except W2006 & W2018 (α = 0.05).

One student commented:
  • Dr. Haave was always willing to ask questions and never made you feel stupid.

Students' perceptions of the course structure & material

Quality of course content
Most student cohorts have rated the quality of this biochemistry course content highly with an SRI greater than 4. ANOVA did detect differences among the cohorts with the Tukey-Kramer post-hoc test detecting paired differences between the extremes: W2018 is significantly lower than the W2007 and F2010 cohorts (α = 0.05).

One student commented:
  • I found every aspect of the course valuable

Clarity of course goals and objectives
Biochemistry students consistently rate highly the clarity of my goals and objectives for the course (mean = 4.3). ANOVA did not find any significant differences among the different student cohorts (𝛼 = 0.05). 

There were no student comments related to the clarity of the course goals and objectives.


Course workload and difficulty
Biochemistry students consistently rate the workload and difficulty of the course to be high. ANOVA did detect significant differences among the cohorts. The Tukey-Kramer post-hoc test detected significant differences for workload between the W2020 cohort and all other cohorts except W2006 & W2021 (α = 0.05).  Note that data is missing for the W07 and W18 cohorts due to an administrative error.

ANOVA did not detect significant differences among the cohorts regarding the difficulty of the course (α = 0.05).
Related student comments:
  • The team apps, though quite hard sometimes, are great for applying your learning.
  • the course was demanding and took up more time than all my other courses
  • It is a tough course overall

Students' perceptions of their own experience

The course was a good learning experience
Students typically find biochemistry to be a good learning experience (mean = 4). ANOVA did not detect significant differences among the student cohorts (α = 0.05). Note that due to an administrative error, data was not collected for this prompt in 2007 or 2018.

Related student comments:
  • I found the group applications most valuable because they allowed for group interaction and discussion about the material being learned.
  • I really enjoyed working on the video assignment (even though I'm not great with video editing).
  • a fun learning experience

Motivation to learn more
Most students in this course are motivated to learn more about biochemistry (mean = 3.6). ANOVA indicated significant differences among the student cohorts (α = 0.05) but differences between pairs of cohorts were not detected by the Tukey-Kramer post-hoc test (α = 0.05).

There were no student comments related to students' motivation to learn more.

Students increased their knowledge
Biochemistry students highly rate their acquisition of biochemical knowledge in this course (mean = 4.4). ANOVA did not detect significant differences among the student cohorts (α = 0.05).
Related student comments:
  • After taking this course I found my knowledge in a field that I had zero knowledge on expanded greatly as the course was streamlined and the videos provided gave a lot of insight on what we needed to know.

Student concerns

A couple of students noted that they felt that there was insufficient time for the online exams (1 hour for the MT exams and 1.5 hrs for the final exam) delivered through ExamLock. In addition, a couple of students indicated that they would have preferred live lectures over Zoom rather than the pre-recorded video lectures I had prepared before the course began. One student indicated their dissatisfaction with two-stage exams (these were implemented for the two MT exams) preferring to write the entirety of an exam on their own. A few students indicated dissatisfaction with the use of many Zoom meetings for answering student questions with few opportunities to apply their learning as occurred in the previous semester in Molecular Cell Biology with TBL Apps.

Discussion

Although students' responses to my teaching and the course I had prepared for them were somewhat weaker than in previous terms, it was still overall well-received by students in the winter 2021 term. I knew that the winter 2021 offering of AUBIO/AUCHE 280 - Biochemistry: Proteins, Enzymes & Energy was not going to be as good of a learning experience as in previous years because I did not have sufficient time to solve the problem of academic dishonesty during online exams, quizzes and applications of learning that I had observed in the previous fall 2020 term with AUBIO 111 - Integrative Biology I and AUBIO 230 - Molecular Cell Biology. Please do not misunderstand me: there were only a handful of students who unfairly took advantage of the online learning situation in fall 2020; most students learned with academic integrity. Still, it is incumbent upon the instructor to ensure that students are being assessed equitably in an environment where no student receives an unfair advantage. The only way I was able to ensure equitable assessment for all students in the winter 2021 term was to pre-Google every online question that contributed to students' final grades. I was able to do that for the MT and final exams but not for in-class (via Zoom) applications of students' learning. As a result, I was unable to implement TBL as the instructional strategy as students had experienced in courses that I had taught in previous terms. In addition, I also used our university's in house developed exam proctoring software, ExamLock which takes periodic snapshots of students' desktop and sends an alert to the online proctor when students browse to another window on their desktop.

What did I learn? What will I do differently?

Students appreciate and benefit from the online homework websites that many publishers make available with the adoption of their textbooks for a course. I tried this for the first time in the previous fall 2020 term, using Mastering Biology for AUBIO 111 and Smartwork5 for AUBIO 230. For AUBIO/AUCHE 280 I used the Achieve homework website that accompanied the textbook I had adopted for the course (Biochemistry, 9/e by Berg et al, 2019) which has been shown to improve student learning outcomes and is viewed favourably by students (McWilliams & Bergin, 2020; McWilliams et al, 2020). I decided to implement these online homework websites for my courses in the 2020/21 academic year to increase the feedback that students would receive as they practised their learning. I was concerned that this would be lacking in the online learning environment that existed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of my students commented that they appreciated the practice of applying their learning through Achieve. I will use publisher's homework websites again in the future.  

Unlike the previous term in which I implemented TBL as the instructional strategy for AUBIO 111 - Integrative Biology I and AUBIO 230 - Molecular Cell Biology, I did not do the same for the winter 2021 offering of AUBIO/AUCHE 280 - Biochemistry. As I already stated above, this was because any online question that was assessed for contribution to students' final grades had to be pre-Googled and I simply did not have the time to do that for each and every App that I had prepared for F2F teaching. Instead, I used class time to meet with students online over Zoom to answer any of their questions. Many students used that time to either read the textbook pages I had assigned or view the video recorded minilectures I had prepared during the preceding summer of 2020. But many students showed up without questions hoping that others would ask questions for them. After a couple of weeks, online attendance over Zoom declined but a core of approximately 10 students continued to show up for Zoom classes. I offered to put students into random breakout rooms to attempt the Apps I had prepared using Google Forms but without the marks being recorded. This turned out to be a good learning experience for the students who did show up. But a couple of students did comment on the SRI that they felt little incentive to continue showing up for class when the marks were not contributing toward their final grade. In the future, when I again implement TBL for this course I will have students do a couple of Apps each class that do not contribute toward their final grade and then end the class meeting with one that does for which I have pre-Googled the exercise to ensure that it is not possible to copy and paste and answer after a simple Google search (I can usually complete 2-3 Apps in a one hour class). A study has found that implementing Apps without the mark contributing to students' final grades does not negatively impact student learning outcomes and is preferred by students (Deardorff et al, 2014) yet some students indicate that they will not show up for the class if the work completed in-class does not contribute to their final grade. I wish there had been time for me to prepare to mix it up like this (most not for marks, one per class for marks) for biochemistry in winter 2021.

Two-stage tests during MT exams

Two-stage testing has been found to improve student learning outcomes (Mahoney & Harris-Reeves, 2019). However, in this course the response from students toward this testing strategy was mixed. This is an interesting result because when I used two-stage testing for the Readiness Assurance Tests (RATs) when TBL is the teaching strategy, the student response has been predominantly positive. I believe the difference in response is that in the winter 2021 term, the two-stage testing was used for high stakes MT exams instead of for low stakes RATs. Also, unlike two-stage testing for RATs in which students spend most of their time on the team portion of the quiz, for higher stakes exams, it is the individual portion of the two-stage quiz for which students require more time. My experience suggests that the time allocation is different depending upon whether the test is formative or summative. If it is formative the allocation is 1 part individual to 2 parts team; if it is summative it is 2 parts individual to 1 part team. This is my sense based on winter 2021 vs the preceding terms which implemented TBL in biochemistry. My colleagues have suggested this may be because students are less prepared for the formative quizzes (i.e., students are still learning the material - they have only just experienced the new course material in the assigned pre-class reading or video) vs being better prepared for the summative exams (i.e., students have spent more time and repeated time with the material being examined). Thus, more time is required during the team portion of a 2-stage exam/quiz that is formative in nature because there is more student discussion. In contrast during a summative 2-stage exam, students are more sure of their understanding and thus the team discussion does not require as much time. I have not yet found a peer-reviewed paper that analyzes this issue.

What happened in 2018 and 2021?

This biochemistry course is one of my favourite courses to teach and is typically very well received by students despite its perceived difficulty and workload. So what happened in 2018 and 2021 in which the SRIs are lower for some of the survey prompts (i.e., contact time was used effectively, instructor communicated effectively, quality of course content).

Winter 2018 was the 2nd term of Augustana's first year of implementation of our new term structure in which students completed one course during the first three weeks of the term and then completed their other four courses during the subsequent 11 weeks of the term. I think students (and instructors!) were still adjusting to that change and it impacted some of the ratings for that term though perhaps not as much as it affected the SRIs for Molecular Cell Biology in the preceding fall 2017 term.

I did not use TBL as the instructional strategy in 2021 for AUBIO 280 because I had not yet solved the problem of academic dishonesty in an online environment. The solution required pre-Googling all online assignments, quizzes, and exams and I only found the time to do that for the exams. As a result, many students did not avail themselves of the practice time that I provided them to apply their learning because the in-class (via Zoom) Apps were no longer for marks that contributed toward their final grade. I simply did not have adequate time to prepare for this in the transition from F2F to online teaching.

But why did the W2021 cohort rate my effective use of class time significantly differently from cohorts W2006 to F2012 and W2020 but not from the cohorts in W2017 through to 2019? I think the answer is that I started using TBL consistently as the instructional strategy after F2012 and that although students' learning outcomes improve with TBL (Liu & Beaujean, 2017), students may not perceive the instructional time (i.e., in-class or over Zoom) to be as well utilized as when class time is used for lecturing (Lane, 2008) similar to what has been found in other active learning classes (Deslauriers, et al, 2019; Van Sickle, 2017; Smith & Cardaciotto, 2011). However, when implemented well, most students will respond well to active learning (Finelli et al, 2018). 

Based on the graphs in the Results section above, it appears (i.e., a nonsignificant trend) to me that my ability to implement TBL in AUBIO/AUCHE 280 - Biochemistry: Proteins, Enzymes & Energy was improving prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. What might be improving students' reception of TBL in this biochemistry course? Some of the things that I was starting to do are well-articulated suggestions in the article by Finelli et al (2018). My method of canvassing students' team responses during their in-class apps when we were meeting F2F was to use QuickKey which uses QR codes on cards that are quickly scanned by instructor's smartphones or tablets. It is an ingenious system (note that the app also enables smartphones and tablets to grade MCQ tests similar to a scantron) but requires instructors to remain visible at the front of the class in order to scan the QR cards. This limits instructors' ability to walk among student teams to offer encouragement and advice while the teams work on the assigned applications of learning. Between 2012 and 2021 I became better at interacting with student teams in a specified time before returning to the front of the class to scan the QR codes. A simple thing to do in principle but something that I need to be intentional about - it took practice for me to do well.

A final consideration is the room that I teach in (the physical space) can impact how students learn (Cotner, et al, 2013; Park & Choi, 2014). I started teaching in Augustana's active learning classroom (ALC) in 2017. In contrast to the traditional lecture theatre, our ALC is designed around pods of tables at which is located a large computer screen/whiteboard. This allows students to work in teams facing each other across a common table while at the same time viewing what I am presenting on the screen. In addition, the whiteboard ability of the screens at each pod enables students to work on group problems that I assign during class. This is an excellent design for active learning and teamwork. A drawback of Augustana's ALC is that there are two wings that float above the main floor of the classroom that house 4 pods of students (6 students to a pod). When the number of students seated on the main floor exceeds its limit (approximately 48) then the overflow goes upstairs into these wings where the sight lines between the student and the instructor are poor. It took me a couple of years to learn that the best way to deal with student enrolments greater than 48 in this ALC was to rotate the student teams through the different learning pods such that no one team was relegated to the weaker learning environment in those upstairs wings for the entire term. When the situation is explained to students along with its pros and cons students come on board with the learning environment. When well-implemented, this is an excellent learning space.

Resources

Berg, Jeremy, M., Tymoczko, J. L., Gatto, G. J. J., & Stryer, L. (2019). Biochemistry (9th ed.). W. H. Freeman and Company, MacMillan Learning.

Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Becoming a critically reflective teacher (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Cotner, S., Loper, J., Walker, J. D., & Brooks, D. C. (2013). It’s not you, it’s the room - Are the high-tech, active learning classrooms worth it? Journal of College Science Teaching, 42(6), 82–88. 

Deardorff, A. S., Moore, J. A., McCormick, C., Koles, P. G., & Borges, N. J. (2014). Incentive structure in team-based learning: graded versus ungraded Group Application exercises. Journal of Educational Evaluation for Health Professions, 11, art 6. 

Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L. S., Miller, K., Callaghan, K., & Kestin, G. (2019). Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(39), 19251–19257. 

Eguchi, H., Sakiyama, H., Naruse, H., Yoshihara, D., Fujiwara, N., & Suzuki, K. (2020). Introduction of team-based learning improves understanding of glucose metabolism in biochemistry among undergraduate students. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, 49(3), 383–391.

Finelli, C. J., Nguyen, K., DeMonbrun, M., Borrego, M., Prince, M., Husman, J., Henderson, C., Shekhar, P., & Waters, C. K. (2018). Reducing student resistance to active learning: Strategies for instructors. Journal of College Science Teaching, 47(5), 80–91.

Lane, D. R. (2008). Teaching skills for facilitating team-based learning. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2008(116), 55–68.

Liu, S.-N. C., & Beaujean, A. A. (2017). The effectiveness of team-based learning on academic outcomes: A meta-analysis. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 3(1), 1–14. 

Mahoney, J. W., & Harris-Reeves, B. (2017). The effects of collaborative testing on higher order thinking: Do the bright get brighter? Active Learning in Higher Education, 20(1), 25-37. 

McWilliams, K., & Bergin, J. (2020). Achieving student success: Using indicators of college readiness to measure the efficacy of Achieve. MacMillan Learning.

McWilliams, K., Bergin, J., Black, A., Baughman, M., & Runyon, B. (2020). Achieve more: The learning engineering of Achieve and insights into instructor implementations and instructor and student outcomes. MacMillan Learning.

Park, E. L., & Choi, B. K. (2014). Transformation of classroom spaces: traditional versus active learning classroom in colleges. Higher Education, 68(5), 749–771. 

Smith, C. V, & Cardaciotto, L. (2011). Is active learning like broccoli? Student perceptions of active learning in large lecture classes. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, 11(1), 53–61. 

Van Sickle, J. R. (2016). Discrepancies between student perception and achievement of learning outcomes in a flipped classroom. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 16(2), 29–38. 

Friday 3 June 2022

confusing the teaching strategy with the professor and course content

At the Augustana Campus, a number of us have been using team-based learning (TBL) for a number of years and it is interesting how different students and colleagues respond to its implementation. Most students, when confronted with TBL for the first time are open to it but unsure. At midterm, many students are frustrated with the course but seem to confuse the difficulty of the course content with the teaching strategy blaming the strategy rather than the difficulty of the course. By the time the course ends most students appreciate the incremental and developmental nature of TBL realizing that the daily/weekly requirement to attend to learning the course material ends up making studying for the final exam more efficient because TBL has structured their learning such that they are studying for the final exam throughout the course rather than leaving the learning to cram it in during the week before the exam.

But, there is a very vocal minority who are frustrated with TBL as an instructional strategy and are convinced that their instructor has abandoned them to have to learn it on their own instead of understanding that ultimately, learning does occur on one's own but that TBL has structured class time to practice their learning thereby revealing to students those areas that still need their studious attention. It can be heartbreaking to receive student evaluations of instruction at the end of the term that harshly denigrate the course, instructor, and instructional strategy after working hard to develop appropriate in-class assignments (apps or applications in the language of TBL) for students to learn the course material and accompanying skills through practice under the guidance of both peers and instructor.

I think some of the frustration experienced by students with TBL is misplaced and should actually be placed on the course content itself. I use TBL to teach biochemistry, molecular cell biology and first-year functional biology. Each of these courses was a challenge for students before I began implementing TBL in my courses. It is just that students' frustration with learning difficult course content has shifted from blaming the nature of the course content to blaming the nature of the instructional strategy used to teach the course.

Now, don't misinterpret what I am saying here. Most of my students learn to appreciate what TBL does for them. But the minority who passionately dislike TBL as a learning and teaching strategy is incredibly vocal about it assuming that most students think like them when the data from my student evaluations of teaching make this clearly a false assumption.

The other interesting response is how colleagues respond to my use of TBL as an active learning strategy in my classrooms. Many are very interested, some are little sceptical, and a very few are very annoyed that this teaching and learning strategy persists on our campus. My sense is that these annoyed colleagues are taking the vocal dislike of the passionate few students at face value and accept their opinion to be the common judgement of the inability of TBL to promote student learning outcomes. I find it interesting that colleagues who are rigorous about ensuring that the conclusions they make in their own research are based upon evidence end up making vocal judgements about a teaching strategy on their campus based on hearsay. And when introduced to the vast literature which provides the evidence of its efficacy, dismisses the entire published body of evidence on the basis of a few poor studies.

Part of the issue of a few colleagues negatively responding to TBL being used on their campus is, I am sure, because the ones who first implemented it on our campus, followed by myself who adopted it a few years later were rather vocal in its efficacy making it seem as if those who were not using TBL to teach their courses were somehow teaching with an inferior instructional strategy. There is nothing as infuriating as the zealousness of the recent and naive convert and I confess to being a TBL zealot when I experienced TBL on the road to Damascus back in 2010.

In order to promote active learning on my campus in all of its marvellous and effective forms, I need to rebuild some bridges after unleashing the rhetoric of TBL. Teaching and learning is a wondrous activity to be engaged in. To be part of someone's learning journey and see the lightbulb come on when a concept, principle or skill finally clicks into place and becomes integrated with the mental model of the world ... that is a wondrous thing to behold. And as instructors, when we experience our own "aha" moment while realizing that a different instructional approach works for a different student who was previously struggling to understand, that is our own lightbulb experience that I am so grateful to experience again, and again, and again.

Resources


Carmichael, J. (2009). Team-based learning enhances performance in introductory biology. Journal of College Science Teaching, 38(4), 54–61.

Cooper, K. M., Ashley, M., & Brownell, S. E. (2017). Using expectancy value theory as a framework to reduce student resistance to active learning: A proof of concept. Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education, 18(2).

Felder, R. M., & Brent, R. (1996). Navigating the bumpy road to student-centered instruction. College Teaching, 44(2), 43–47.

Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(23), 8410–5.

Huggins, C. M., & Stamatel, J. P. (2015). An exploratory study comparing the effectiveness of lecturing versus team-based learning. Teaching Sociology, 43(3), 227–235.

Mezeske, B. (2004). Shifting paradigms? Don’t forget to tell your students. The Teaching Professor, 18(7), 1.

Michael, J. (2006). Where’s the evidence that active learning works? Advances in Physiology Education, 30(4), 159–167.


Prince, M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of Engineering Education, 93(3), 223–231.

Prince, M., & Weimer, M. (2017, November 2). Understanding student resistance to active learning.

Schwegler, A. F. (2013). From lessons learned the hard way to lessons learned the harder way. InSight: A Journal of Scholarly Teaching, 8, 26–31.

Seidel, S. B., & Tanner, K. D. (2013). “What if students revolt?”—Considering student resistance: Origins, options, and opportunities for investigation. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 12(4), 586–595.

Spence, L. (2004). “The professor made us do it ourselves.” The Teaching Professor, 18(4), 6.

The Team-Based Learning Collaborative.

Weimer, M. (2013). Responding to resistance. In Learner-centered teaching: Five key changes to practice (2nd ed., pp. 199–217). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint.

Weimer, M. (2014, September 10). “She didn’t teach. We had to learn it ourselves.” Faculty Focus - The Teaching Professor Blog.

Wieman, C. E. (2014). Large-scale comparison of science teaching methods sends clear message. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(23), 8319–20.

Thursday 2 June 2022

meeting student resistance to learning with resilience


The interview with Michael Ungar (Bethune 2019) and Ungar's Globe and Mail article (2019) have made me rethink this issue of resistance to active learning by students. It is interesting what our 2019 Faculty Learning Community stumbled across in our exploration of this issue - that it is a chicken-egg issue, a cycle in which students need to be resilient to engage in active learning yet active learning promotes the development of student resilience. However, we have been thinking of this in terms of resilience being an internal issue. We have been assuming that resilience is a capacity or skill or attribute that can be developed within students. But what Ungar has got me thinking about now is that the ability to be resilient is also a matter of social network and institutional systems. Ungar's work has found that people are more resilient when there are support measures in place for people under stress. These could be some sort of welfare policies and structures or they could be the network of family and friends. Actually, it is not either-or, it is both, Resilience is fostered in people when they have a solid social network (friends and family) and when their community has structures and systems in place to ensure that people are taken care of in times of crisis. Ungar's work cites a number of these social structures such as ensuring that people are able to access insurance and welfare benefits quickly when needed or that there are systems in place to ensure that people have food and shelter when they become unsheltered. The idea that resilience is completely an internal quality is false. I don't think, however, that it is a dualistic situation. I do think that there is an internal aspect of resilience. People may have better resilience developed than others. But what is interesting from Ungar's work is that for most people it seems that social systems play a greater role in producing resilient people than relying solely on internal capability.

So what does this have to with students' resistance to learning?

It has got me thinking that if we as educators wish to promote resilience in our students such that they are able to engage in active learning then we also need to consider our classroom policies and course structures we have implemented. My question is, what sort of classroom policies and course structures will develop students' resilience? Well, a good place to start, I think is to consider the AAC&U's high impact practices. Which one of them will develop social structures in our courses? First-year seminars I think make sense. Also, learning communities, collaborative assignments and projects, undergraduate research, and service-learning. Why these five of the 11? I think these five will promote students' resilience because they are all structured to develop relationships among learners, between students and teachers, and between learners and their community.

I also think that active learning itself, when properly structured can promote resilience because learning activities that promote social interaction among students will develop their resilience based on Ungar's research. I think this is why team-based learning (TBL) can be such a powerful active learning instructional strategy: the stable teams established at the beginning of the term develop into a learning community as a result of students working together on the two-stage tests and on the in-class applications of learning. Think-pair-share does the same thing by getting students to interact with each other; portions of the class become a transient community. Personal response systems (PRS), such as clickers, can do the same provided that there is a sharing among students after their initial response. PRSs used properly end up being a kind of two-stage exam that fosters student interaction.

However, active learning can explicitly develop resilience or it may not, depending upon how it is implemented. If it is just think-pair-share or personal response systems which include peer discussion, it may or may not develop resilience in students because it is dependent upon whether or not students develop relationships with the students with whom they interact. This will only occur if students interact consistently with the same students. If it is a class of 500, students may not interact with the same students on an ongoing basis if they are always changing where they sit. If on the other hand students are creatures of habit (and I would argue that the vast majority are) then they will likely sit in the same seat and get to know their neighbours. The nice thing about TBL is it explicitly facilitates this relationship-building in its educational system by forming stable teams at the beginning of a course.

I think this is key. If they have a learning community, they may be more willing to take risks in learning and not be devasted by the occasional low-stakes failure. As a result, learning will be more robust with active learning as a result of interleaved retrieval practice which we know enhances learning.


Resources

Beri, N., & Kumar, D. (2018). Predictors of academic resilience among students: A meta analysis. I-Manager’s Journal on Educational Psychology, 11(4), 37.

Bethune, B. (2019). The real key to bouncing back. Maclean’s, 132(5.4), 1–5. (available online as When it comes to resilience, the self-help industry has it all wrong)

Fink, L. D. (2016). Five high-impact teaching practices: A list of possibilities. Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching, 9, 3–18.

Holdsworth, S., Turner, M., & Scott-Young, C. M. (2018). … Not drowning, waving. Resilience and university: a student perspective. Studies in Higher Education, 43(11), 1837–1853.

Kuh, G., O’Donnell, K., & Schneider, C. G. (2017). HIPs at ten. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 49(5), 8–16. 

Lemelin, C., Gross, C. D., Bertholet, R., Gares, S., Hall, M., Henein, H., Kozlova, V., Spila, M., Villatoro, V., & Haave, N. (2021). Mitigating student resistance to active learning by constructing resilient classrooms. Bioscene: Journal of College Biology Teaching, 47(2), 3–9. 

Liu, S.-N. C., & Beaujean, A. A. (2017). The effectiveness of team-based learning on academic outcomes: A meta-analysis. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 3(1), 1–14.

Swanson, E., McCulley, L. V., Osman, D. J., Scammacca Lewis, N., & Solis, M. (2019). The effect of team-based learning on content knowledge: A meta-analysis. Active Learning in Higher Education, 20(1), 39–50.

Ungar, M., & Liebenberg, L. (2013). Ethnocultural factors, resilience, and school engagement. School Psychology International, 34(5), 514–526.

Ungar, M. (2019, May 25). Resilience: Our ability to bounce back depends more on what’s around us than what’s within us. The Globe and Mail.

Tuesday 24 May 2022

2nd year molecular cell biology in fall 2020

Introduction

This is my fourth reflection on my experience with online teaching during the pandemic of the 2020/21 academic year. This reflection considers the course AUBIO 230 - Molecular Cell Biology which I taught in the fall term of 2020. Links to my other reflections may be found at this link here.

I have taught cell biology in some form or other since 1990 at the Augustana Campus of the University of Alberta. I taught BIO 201 - Cell Biology from 1990 to 1998. It was then removed from Augustana's biology degree program when the biological disciplines (zoology, botany, microbiology, and more) in the Faculty of Science on the North Campus of the U of A were reorganized into one Department of Biological Sciences. That initiated a whole scale change in the way that biology was taught in Alberta with one model following the University of Calgary and another following the University of Alberta. At that time Augustana was not a Faculty of the University of Alberta but was rather an independent private liberal arts & sciences college: Augustana University College.

To manage the issue of transfer between the Southern Alberta (U of Calgary) and Northern Alberta (U of Alberta) models of postsecondary biological education the three large universities (Universities of Alberta, Calgary and Lethbridge) entered into a two-year block transfer agreement with the other smaller post-secondary institutions in Alberta (e.g., Athabasca University, Red Deer College, Augustana University College, King's University College, Concordia University College, Grande Prarie Regional College, and many more). I was a part of these negotiations which resulted in the following block of courses that if students completed in their first two years at any institution in Alberta would transfer as a block for equal credit thus solving the problem of a southern and northern model of biological education:

  • cell biology - 3 cr
  • evolution - 3 cr
  • genetics - 3 cr
  • ecology - 3 cr
  • biological diversity - 3 cr (could be from zoology, botany or microbiology)
  • biochemistry - 3 cr
  • chemistry - 9 cr (comprised of general and organic)
  • statistics - 3 cr
  • mathematics - 3cr
Four of the five biology courses above must have an associated lab. This block transfer gave each institution the ability to organise these foundational biological topics in whatever made sense for their program enabling students to complete these transfer courses over a minimum of their first two years of their undergraduate degree program.

As a result of these block transfer negotiations, Augustana's 2nd-year biology course became a 1st-year biology course where it remained for many years. However, over the subsequent years, Alberta PSE found that many students still wanted to transfer their courses among the PSIs piecemeal rather than as a two-year block. In addition, the Department of Biological Sciences ended up not removing their 2nd-year cell biology course instead having a 1st-yr introduction to cell biology followed by a 2nd-yr eukaryotic cell biology course. By the end of 2010, the block transfer in biology was abandoned and Augustana revised the 1st-year cell biology course to 1st-year functional biology (Integrative Biology I) and returned to teaching cell biology in the 2nd-year of their biology major as AUBIO 230 - Molecular Cell Biology in 2011.

In this blog post, I reflect on the Fall 2020 offering of AUBIO 230 - Molecular Cell Biology for which I was the instructor. This was the first term that I taught completely online and it was also the first time since the 1990s that I was the instructor for more than three courses in one term all of which had to be revised from face-to-face delivery to remote delivery. This is how I spent my spring and summer in 2020: revising molecular cell biology along with a couple of other courses so that students had a reasonable educational experience in an entirely online environment. Needless to say, this was a large amount of work to complete in a very short amount of time.

My reflection on teaching molecular cell biology during the fall 2020 term relies on my own personal experience, students' feedback from the end of term student ratings of instruction (SRI), the SoTL literature I have read, and advice that I have received from my colleagues. These are the four lenses that Stephen Brookfield (2017) advocates should inform any critical reflection of teaching:

  • students' eyes
  • colleagues' perceptions
  • personal experience of the instructor
  • theory (the SoTL literature)

Methods & Materials

As noted in the introduction above, AUBIO 230 - Molecular Cell Biology has gone through a number of revisions from a 2nd-year cell biology course, to a 1st-yr introduction to cell biology, ending up being what it is today, a course which considers the molecular biology of the cell. The primary difference between where the course started to where it is today is that initially, the course focused on the structure of cells and what that structure told us about how cells function. It was a classic structure and function course which relied heavily on cell ultrastructure and biochemical studies to inform us about how cells work. The publication of Molecular Biology of the Cell in 1983 by Alberts et al. changed how cell biology was conceived and studied by senior and graduate students. Certainly, there were other textbooks that were designed to bring a molecular understanding to bear on how cells work, but none were considered the same way as Molecular Biology of the Cell which came to be known as "The Bible" of cell biology. But it was not until this same author team produced Essential Cell Biology in 1998 that cell biology education began to truly focus on a molecular understanding of how cells work for undergraduate students in the first two years of their degree program. 

Our knowledge of the molecular biology of the cell has exploded over the last couple of decades requiring instructors to carefully curate this burgeoning field for neophyte students. I have done this for the current iteration of AUBIO 230 - Molecular Cell Biology by asking students the overarching course question of how do proteins know where to go inside the cell? If proteins are not in the correct position at the correct time in the correct concentration, cell function is disrupted. To illustrate this point, I ask students on the first day of class what would happen to their ability to absorb sugar from their sports drink after a heavy workout if the apical and basal surfaces of their enterocytes were reversed? They soon realize after drawing a functional diagram of an enterocyte that they would die due to lack of nutrient absorption. So how do the correct proteins know to arrive in their correct intracellular positions after protein synthesis? And once there, how do they communicate with other proteins that they are there and ready to function?

This grabs students' attention and we spend the remainder of the course learning the techniques and experiments that have produced our current understanding of how cells get proteins into their different organelles and once there how they work and communicate with each other. Those of you reading this who are molecular biologists know that this is a huge field. This is a second-year (sophomore) course that only introduces students to this field. 

To facilitate students' learning of the molecular details of cells and the approaches we have used to study them, I use the instructional strategy of team-based learning or TBL (Haide, Kubitz & McCormack, 2014) which I have explained in some detail in a previous blog post. Briefly, students are assigned pre-class preparation (a reading &/or a video recording) guided by a reading or viewing guide with learning objectives. After this pre-class preparation, students come to class to write a two-stage quiz (iRAT + tRAT in TBL lingo) consisting of 10 MCQs answered individually in 15 minutes followed by a longer period of time for the team attempt of the same quiz. Subsequent classes consist of team applications (Apps) of their learning. In the online environment that resulted from the pandemic, RATs and Apps were completed over Zoom using the breakout rooms to facilitate the teamwork. In addition, I allocated the class time before the two-stage quiz to a drop-in session over Zoom during which anyone and everyone in the class could come to ask questions about the pre-class assignment. Some students used this time to either ask me questions or to individually review the reading or video-recording. The quizzes were conducted using the quizzing feature in adaptive mode of our LMS which is based on Moodle. Apps were completed by teams using Google Forms to deliver the problems. Both RATs and Apps contributed to students' final course grades. You may view the course syllabus that I used in Fall 2020 at this link here. For this course, I did not use any proctoring or exam monitoring software as I have in other courses. There were repercussions from this decision that I will address in the Discussion.

Something new that I implemented for this course was the use of Smartwork5, the online homework website that is available to students free of charge with the purchase of the assigned textbook for the course (Essential Cell Biology, 5th ed.). Completion of these online individual assignments was awarded some marks toward their final grade (15%) to encourage their completion resulting in the study of the course material. These homework assignments were available to students for one week after we had completed our consideration of the topic in the course schedule (i.e., after RATs and Apps were completed and graded). Students were permitted to submit their Smartwork5 homework assignments late (5% penalty per day late). I also made available to students pre-class quizzes through Smartwork5 which enabled students to practice their learning without penalty; these pre-class quizzes did not contribute to students' final grades and were available to students throughout the term once the course schedule reached that topic.

SRI results were analysed for statistical differences among the different student cohorts using ANOVA (α = 0.05). The Tukey-Kramer post-hoc test was then used to detect differences among pairs of student cohorts (α = 0.05) if ANOVA initially detected differences among all cohorts. Details of the SRI survey were described in a previous blog post. The student comments in the following Results section are in response to four open-ended questions inviting students to type their comments into our online SRI survey:

  • What aspects of the course and/or instructor did you find most valuable?
  • What aspects of the course and/or instructor did you find least valuable?
  • How useful were the course textbook(s) and/or other learning support materials?
  • Please add any other comments that you would like to make about the course and/or instructor.

Results

ANOVA detected significant differences (α = 0.05) among the student cohorts for all SRI prompts. Generally speaking, the Tukey-Kramer post-hoc test indicates that the Fall 2020 cohort had the best experience and Fall 2017 had the worst experience in AUBIO 230 - Molecular Cell Biology among the student cohorts I have taught.

Students' perceptions of the instructor

Instructor overall

In Fall 2020 I received the highest rating ever (mean = 4.8) for my excellence as an instructor by students in Molecular Cell Biology but this was only significantly different from the cohorts in Fall 2017 and 2019. Statistically significant differences were detected between F2017 and all other cohorts except F2019 with F2019 being significantly different from the W2012, F2012 & F2020 cohorts (α = 0.05).

Student comments corroborate the numerical data above regarding my excellence as an instructor:
  • I believe Professor Haave truly wants his students to succeed, not only in his course but in life. The endless resources and repetitions that Haave's style of teaching provides are unparalleled. The instructor was amazing and planned the semester perfectly.
  • Professor Haave, is a great professor who took a lot of time to set up the best possible way to learn during COVID.
  • Neil is awesome! So thankful I had him this semester and can't wait for more classes with him!
  • Dr. Haave is a wonderful professor, very respectful, passionate and organized.

Instructor preparedness
Significant differences were indicated between F2017 and all other cohorts (α = 0.05). The Fall 2020 cohort highly rated how well prepared I was to teach this course (mean = 4.8).

Students' comments support the numerical data above that I was well-prepared:
  • This is reflected by the way he constructs a rigid schedule for the semester, that if not maintained students will drastically fall behind. The structure creates the habits that students need in order to succeed in the field of Biology. 
  • This whole course was very valuable as the eclass set up was very easy to follow and the amount of work placed into the preparation of the class was reflected in the course content.
  • The course was well organized and is one of few that a student could asynchronously learn the material effectively
  • I thought that the mini lectures were concise and easier to digest than the readings which was helpful.
  • I was truly impressed with the organization of the class, especially now being online.
  • [what was valuable to me was] Having lecture videos to go back to and office hours when I needed help.

Instructor's effective use of in-class time
The F2017 is significantly different from all other cohorts. In addition, F2019 is significantly different from F2020 (α = 0.05). The Fall 2020 cohort highly rated how effectively I used the synchronous Zoom sessions (mean = 4.5).

The student comments on the SRI support the graphical data above that class time (i.e., Zoom time) was well used:
  • I really liked working in teams and completing the "apps".
  • I found the instructors [sic] explanation of application questions quite valuable.
  • The instructor used synchronous and asynchronous classes very well and effectively. All lectures were taught asynchronously and all quizzes were during a synchronous time.

Clarity of instructor's speech
Statistically significant differences (α = 0.05) were detected between F2017 and all other cohorts except F2018. The Fall 2020 cohort highly rated my clarity of speech but there were no typed comments that specifically referred to this.


Instructor's constructive feedback
The F2017 cohort was significantly different (α = 0.05) from all other cohorts except F2018. The Fall 2020 cohort was clearly appreciative of the feedback I provided them (mean = 4.4) but was no different from the previous cohorts, other than Fall 2017 (mean = 3.3).

Note that one form of feedback that I designed into the course was the Smartwork5 assignments. Student comments support the numerical data above:
  • I found that working as a team made for a deeper understanding of course information and I appreciated the direct feedback about the apps after completing them. 
  • The textbook and SmartWorks were very useful to the course. I found that having the Pre-lecture quizzes were very helpful as a whole chapter review, and the homework was helpful (especially with the feedback it gave you).
  • I really enjoyed the smartwork assignments as a way to help cement learning before RATs and APPs

Instructor's respectful treatment of students
The F2017 student cohort was found to be significantly different  (α = 0.05) from W2012, F2012, F2019 & F2020. I have consistently treated my students with respect as illustrated in the graph below.

A sample of student comments on the SRI corroborates the data in the graph above:
  • The prof cared about his students and made sure everyone was on the right track and was always ready to help.
  • I liked how they were encouraging and very understanding to the students, especially now that everything is online.
  • He always treats students with the utmost respect and creates a positive learning environment that I enjoy participating in. I especially appreciated Neil's anecdotal stories, sometimes random, but always entertaining.

Students' perceptions of the course structure & material

Quality of course content
Statistically significant differences were detected between F2017 and all other cohorts except F2019 (α = 0.05). In addition, F2020 is significantly different from W2012, F2012, F2016 & F2019. The F2017 cohort was the most dissatisfied (mean = 2.8) with the course whereas F2020 was the most satisfied (mean = 4.7).

One student comment echoed the numerical results:
  • This was a very interesting course and I am looking forward to taking similar ones!

Clarity of course goals and objectives
The F2017 cohort was determined to be significantly different from all other cohorts (α = 0.05). The Fall 2020 cohort found them to be clear with an average SRI of 4.7. There were no student comments that referred to the course goals and objectives.


Course workload and difficulty
The F2020 cohort rated the course difficulty to be significantly less than the student cohorts in W2011, F2012, F2016  & F2017. In addition, the F2018 cohort rated the course difficulty significantly lower than the W2011 & F2012 cohorts (α = 0.05).

Reflective of the numerical data above, there was only one student comment directed toward the course difficulty:
  • Team apps were challenging at times.

The F2020 student cohort rated the course workload to be significantly lighter than all other cohorts except W2011 (α = 0.05). 

There was only one student comment that addressed workload whereas in previous years I have received many comments concerned about the workload (and difficulty) of molecular cell biology. I think the fewer comments regarding the course difficulty and workload indicate students found the Fall 2020 offering of Molecular Cell Biology to be not as overwhelming as previous years being more similar to what the Winter 2011 cohort experienced:
  • The reading [sic] were valuable, but can be overwhelming at times.

Students' perceptions of their own experience

The course was a good learning experience
There were significant differences between F2017 and all other cohorts (α = 0.05). Students in the Fall 2020 cohort highly rated their learning experience with a mean and median SRI of 4.5.

The written comments by students on the SRI corroborate the numerical data above that this was a good learning experience for students in the Fall 2020 cohort:
  • This was by far my favourite course this semester. Neil is great and so nice! I really liked how some classes were synchronous and some wre [sic] not. and the synchronous classes were so fun. I really enjoyed splitting into teams to do quizzes and assignments - this time is hard so being able to actually talk virtually with your classmates was great!!
  • Overall, this instructor provided a positive learning experience throughout the semester.
  • The learning environment was very encouraging.

Motivation to learn more
The F2017 cohort is significantly different from the cohorts in W2011, F2012, F2018 & F2020 (α = 0.05). In addition, F2020 was significantly different from W2012 & F2016. The cohort in Fall 2020 had greater motivation to learn more (mean = 4.4) than previous student cohorts but there were no student comments that addressed this SRI prompt.



Students increased their knowledge
Statistical analysis found F2017 to be significantly different from W2012, F2012, F2018 & F2020 (α = 0.05). In addition, F2016 was significantly different from F2020. The Fall 2020 cohort highly rated their increase in knowledge with an SRI average of 4.8.

There was one student comment that echoed the numerical data:
  • This course and its instructor were very good and I learned a lot from this course.

Student concerns

Two students commented that the team Apps were the least valuable portion of the course or induced anxiety for them during class. The student who was anxious about the Apps suggested that they not contribute as significantly as they did toward the final course grade (Apps contributed 12% toward students' final grade). Another student commented that they found the information between the mini-lecture videos and the textbook to be virtually the same and so could not justify for themselves the need to read both the text and view the videos. Another student comment suggested that it would be helpful to have an additional office hour that was outside of the flex class time (i.e., the class before the RAT that I used for students to drop in to ask their questions about the pre-class assignment) as they used the flex class time to view the videos rather than come to class to ask questions.

Discussion

I am very pleased with how learners responded to my efforts to produce a quality learning environment for Molecular Cell Biology in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This corresponds to my own experience teaching the course which I found to run well from my perspective. I am also pleased that students recognized the time and energy required to prepare a traditional F2F course for online learning. 

What did I learn? What will I do differently?

It is interesting that before the pandemic before I was forced to teach online, I was very dismissive of preparing and making available video-recorded mini-lectures thinking that they could not recreate the experience I provided students in F2F real-time. The pandemic has taught me that video-recorded mini-lectures are a good alternative to reading the textbook for some students. The problem, of course, is that video recording mini-lectures take an inordinate amount of time whereas an excellent author team has already made available an excellent reading resource. Is it worth an instructor's time to recreate in video format what is already available in text format? I am not sure. In the case of the 2020/21 academic year, I took the advice of my colleagues and the published literature that the online learning environment is best served with video recorded minilectures. The response from my students seems to validate this claim.

A couple of things that I am considering changing for the next time I teach this course in response to the feedback I received from students are:

  • Mix-up the Apps so that some are low stakes (no marks attached) and some will have marks recorded. I can typically run two or three Apps in a single 60 min class. So something I may try in the coming academic year is to have at least the first App not be for marks and the last App to count for marks. Of course, I will warn the students about which ones count and which ones do not.
  • Many students reported to me anecdotally that they appreciated the flex days when there was no formal class but I was available in class (over Zoom) to answer questions or discuss the pre-class assignment. I had announced to students that I would be available to meet individually with students outside of these flex classes if they were unable to attend to ask their questions. Clearly, I need to be more explicit about this alternative as at least one student in Fall 2020 did not understand this to be available to them.
  • I need to make it clearer to students that the learning resources are there for them to use as they wish and that the reading/viewing guides indicate what they will be responsible for on exams. At least one student in Fall 2020 thought that they had to read and watch everything. For some students this may be beneficial to their learning. But I need to make it clear to all students that the learning resources I provide to them may be used (or not) as they see fit. But that to be successful in the course they need to use the reading guide to inform their learning. Maybe I need to rename these as learning guides instead of reading/viewing guides?

What was different for the Fall 2017 and Fall 2020 cohorts?

I was left with a couple of questions after reviewing the statistical analysis of the cohorts' SRIs for molecular cell biology since 2011. Why did the Fall 2020 cohort have the best experience whereas the Fall 2017 cohort seems to have had the worst experience when taught AUBIO 230 - Molecular Cell Biology? 

I think the explanation for the Fall 2017 student cohort reporting a relatively poor experience (relatively speaking because the F2017 experience is still overall positive, rating generally > 3, for the SRI prompts) is because that is the year that Augustana first implemented its new term structure consisting of an initial 3-week block followed by an 11-week block in which students completed one compressed course in the first 3-wk block and then four courses in the subsequent 11-wk block. Teaching (& learning) a course in a three-week block is a very different experience from completing the same course over eleven weeks. Most Augustana faculty had never taught a compressed course before Fall 2017 and were still trying to make adjustments (or realizing that adjustments were necessary) when teaching in the three-week block. Thus, many students were feeling somewhat shell-shocked when they entered AUBIO 230 - Molecular Cell Biology during the subsequent 11-week block after their first ever experience of a three-week block course. On top of that, none of these students had ever experienced a TBL course before AUBIO 230. The SRI response rate was only 51% which is ~25-35% lower than typical for me and thus may represent a disproportionate number of students taking the time to respond to the online SRI survey to express their frustration with Augustana's new term structure and having to adjust to my implementation of TBL as a learning strategy. In subsequent years there were more students enrolled in AUBIO 230 who had some exposure to TBL as a teaching strategy and Augustana faculty became more adept at teaching compressed courses in the three-week block. Fall 2017 may have been a perfect storm for student dissatisfaction when I taught Molecular Cell Biology that term.

What about Fall 2020? Why did they have one of the best if not the best experience since 2011 in Molecular Cell Biology when I taught it in the fall of 2020? This surprises me because this would have been the first term that Augustana students were forced to complete all of their courses in a completely online environment as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. I know students were stressed and dissatisfied with their learning experience because a number of them personally confided in me about this. 

When we were forced to transition from fully F2F teaching and learning to fully remote delivery of our courses in the middle of the previous term (Winter 2020) I had my first experience teaching online. Thus, when it became apparent in the spring of 2020 that the entirety of the 2020/21 academic year was going to be completely online I spent all my spring and summer months preparing the five different courses I was to teach in 202/21 for a totally online experience. This required many hours of attending teaching workshops to develop my ability to continue using TBL in an online educational environment. Mini-lectures needed to be video-recorded, two-stage quizzes needed to be converted from paper delivery to online delivery via our LMS, Apps had to be converted from a paper format to Google Forms. 

This. 

Was. 

A. 

Lot. 

Of. 

Work.

I was unable to attend to my scholarship during the 2020/21 academic year as a result. But, the silver lining is that I was able to deliver an educational experience that was sensitive to students' needs during the pandemic. I think the SRI ratings and accompanying student quotes are evidence of that. The advice of my colleagues through conversations in the different educational communities I belong to (COPLAC, ACUBE, oCUBE, UBEA, STLHE, ISSOTL, The Teaching Professor, Team-based Learning Collaborative, UofA's CTL) all provided me with the necessary advice to successfully prepare for online teaching. The most surprising advice that I was given was to not lecture during the in-class Zoom meetings but rather use those times to answer student questions, support students as they struggled to learn in an online environment, and provide as much as possible the opportunity to practice what they are learning online. This was relatively easy for me to do because it was what I was already doing with my implementation of TBL during my typical F2F classes. The thing I had to master in order to continue doing this in an online environment was delivering two-stage quizzes (Readiness Assurance Tests, or RATs in the vocabulary of TBL) and Apps using the breakout rooms in Zoom, the adaptive mode in our LMS (Moodle which the UofA has branded eClass) quizzing function, and Google Forms. Plus learning how to use Loom to successfully video record minilectures. An incredibly large number of skills to quickly master.

Apparently, I was successful.

Dealing with academic dishonesty

The one sad result from the Fall 2020 teaching term was the number of cases of academic dishonesty I reported to my Associate Dean (Academic). While marking the final exam for Molecular Cell Biology I was shocked to read an answer that was word for word the one I had in my answer key. How did that happen? I found that I had used a question from an older textbook question bank and the question bank (with answers) had been photocopied and uploaded to a "homework" or "study" site such as Course Hero. After I read that copied answer I went through the other students' answers carefully and found a few more that were worded suspiciously similar to my answer rubric. 

The prevalence of academic dishonesty in the Fall 2020 11-week block was a result, I think, of my decision to not use exam proctoring software for online environments. I had decided not to use exam security software in the 11-week block of Fall 2020 because students in the preceding 3-week block course that I had taught (AUBIO/AUCHE 381 - Biochemistry: Intermediary Metabolism) complained that they found the implementation of ExamLock to be anxiety inducing during exams. Being mindful of the anxiety already present in students as a result of the pandemic I made the decision to discontinue using ExamLock during the fall 11-week block. After experiencing the prevelance of academic dishonesty in both AUBIO 230 - Molecular Cell Biology and AUBIO 111 - Integrative Biology I, I made the decision to return to using ExamLock in Winter 2021. I was unable to detect academic dishonesty in both of the courses I taught in Winter 2021.

So, there is a balance that needs to be sought between inducing unnecessary anxiety in students during exams while simultaneously ensuring that students are being examined fairly without undue advantages to some students. Using ExamLock for online learning environments seems to be the best balance for my online courses. ExamLock does not record students' physical surroundings, but does take periodic screen shots of students' computer desktop. In addition, it detects and alerts the instructor when students navigate away from the window containing the exam. This does not prevent students from using a smartphone or 2nd computer to look up answers to questions, but at least it prevents students from simply copying and pasting answers they find on the internet. I now pre-Google all exam questions before setting the exam rewording them until they are no longer easily Googleable. It takes time, but on balance using ExamLock and pre-Googling questions seems to be the best compromise when examining student learning in an online environment. 

Resources

Alberts, B., Johnson, A. D., Lewis, J., Morgan, D., Raff, M., Roberts, K., & Walter, P. (1983). Molecular Biology of the Cell. Garland Science.

Alberts, B., Johnson, A., Hopkin, K., Raff, M., Roberts, K., Bray, D., Lewis, J., & Walter, P. (1998). Essential cell biology. Garland Science.

Alberts, B., Hopkin, K., Johnson, A., Morgan, D., Raff, M., Roberts, K., & Walter, P. (2019). Essential Cell Biology (5th ed.). W. W. Norton & Company. 

Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Becoming a critically reflective teacher (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass. 

Haide, P., Kubitz, K., & McCormack, W. T. (2014). Analysis of the team-based learning literature: TBL comes of age. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 25(3&4), 303–333.