Introduction
This is my 3rd reflection on my experience with online teaching during the pandemic of the 2020/21 academic year. This reflection considers the course AUBIO 381/AUCHE 381 - Biochemistry: Intermediary Metabolism which I taught in the fall term of 2020. Links to my other reflections may be found at this link here.
AUBIO/AUCHE 381 - Intermediary Metabolism, is a course that I teach 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).
I have been teaching Intermediary Metabolism approximately every other year since the early 1990s for a total of 16 iterations. B/C 381 requires a previous course in biochemistry (B/C 280) as a prerequisite such that students are familiar with amino acids, proteins, enzymes, glycolysis, the TCA cycle, and oxidative phosphorylation. Entry into B/C 381 thus assumes additional prerequisite knowledge that was required for entry into the first biochemistry course (i.e., knowledge of organic chemistry and cell biology). Intermediary Metabolism is typically a smaller enrolment course: it has ranged from 3 to 24 students over the years. Typical enrollment is 10- 15 students. Fall 2020 enrolment was on the large side with 24 students.
This blog post reflects on my teaching of this course during the 3-week block of the Fall 2020 term. That was the first time I have ever taught this course compressed into 3-weeks during which instructors meet with their students for three hours every day. It was also the first time I had ever taught this course online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I taught this iteration of Intermediary Metabolism using team-based learning (TBL) as I have been doing for the last few years (Sibley, 2018).
Methods & Materials
My implementation of TBL adhered to a traditional delivery with a RAP (readiness assurance process), followed by mini-lectures as necessary and Apps (applications of learning) as is possible in an online environment. The RAP consisted of students preparing for a short quiz (i.e., iRAT consisting of 10 MCQs) completed at the beginning of the first day of a course topic (e.g., fatty acid synthesis). The quiz is completed individually and then completed again as a team (tRAT). Students were given 15 minutes to complete the iRAT (individual readiness assurance test) which was written online over Zoom using the quizzing function of our LMS (based on Moodle) and ExamLock, our locally produced online exam software. This exam software does not monitor the student's physical space. Rather it monitors their computer desktop taking periodic screen captures and notes an alert when a student opens another window on their computer.
I implemented the tRATs (team readiness assurance test) online using Zoom's breakout room feature. One student per team was granted access to the tRAT. While completing the tRAT as a team, the person inputting the team answers shared their screen with their team-mates through Zoom. Student teams were given the remaining time in the class after the iRAT to complete and submit their tRAT. Different from the iRAT, tRATs are set up in our LMS such that students are permitted multiple attempts at any given question for a lesser value. Thus, if students get the answer to a question correct on their first attempt, that question is granted 3 points, correct on 2nd attempt, the question garners 2 points, etc. Student teams (which are stable throughout the course) returned to the main Zoom classroom once they submitted their tRAT when I would review their results with them often generating discussion about why a particular answer was correct (or incorrect) and how different teams went about solving the question. This sometimes turned into minilectures - I explained material to students as necessary. Short video recordings on each course topic that I had made for students were also available throughout the term.
I supported my students' independent learning for the RAP and subsequent Apps by preparing reading guides that listed the objectives of the course section, keywords and a carefully curated list of pages that they were invited to read from the assigned textbook. In addition, on the class day before the RAT instead of a lecture, I hosted students' questions about the reading, This is different from how I have implemented TBL in this course in previous years. In previous years I had relied on office hours for students to seek me out with their questions. But given the stress of the pandemic and to ensure that there was a time when all students were assured of being able to access my time, I used some class time to respond to students' questions. Some students availed themselves of this opportunity, but most used that class time to either read the textbook or view the video-recorded minilectures that I had prepared for them over the summer. PDFs of the slideshows used in the minilectures were also available for student viewing via our LMS.
In addition, I made available online quizzes for each course topic that students could attempt twice during the week they were made available with their highest score contributing nominally toward their final grade. Students also had the option of writing a term paper in exchange for RATs and term exams being of lesser value though no students availed themselves of this option in Fall 2020.
The course syllabus for the Fall 2020 iteration of AUBIO/AUCHE 381 is available at this link here.
In this blog post, I use Brookfield's (1998) four lenses of critical reflection (personal experience, student voices, colleagues' experience, and the published literature) to consider how this course unfolded in Fall 2020. 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.
Results
- The lectures are also helpful in understanding aspects not fully understood by the chapter readings.
- The prerecorded lectures were fantastically done and overall the class was very enjoyable.
- Dr.Haave has an amazing passion for this subject and is clearly very knowledgeable.
- I really liked that our tests were open book, I feel that was the best decision given the circumstances and I applaud Dr. Haave for choosing to do it that way.
- I always thoroughly enjoy Dr. Haave courses, he is always visibly excited to be teaching, especially in AUBIO 381. I found myself smiling as I would almost make out a giggle or two come out of his lips as he explained certain metabolic concepts and ideas. It always helps me learn when a professor is as engaged in the material that they teach as Dr. Haave is.
- Great professor who has a lot of knowledge.
- Dr. Haave is one of my favourite professors at Augustana, and I'm always happy to take courses with him. His passion for teaching his students while learning from them really makes his classes enjoyable. Thanks for another great semester!!
- The content is generally interesting.
- The content of this course was really interesting, and I enjoyed this course way more than I was expecting to!
- I found this class to be both interesting and a challenge throughout the semester.
- I like the team aspect of the course, I think it's very valuable.
- This has probably been one of my favourite courses I have taken so far!
- The lectures were very meticulously planned and thought out which translated into a very effective learning experience.
- Overall, this course was super enjoyable! Thank you Dr. Haave!
- Thanks for the great semester
- Thank you for a great semester!
- Overall, awesome course!
- the reading guides were very clear and provides a good direction to go as we read the chapter.
- THE PRE-RECORDED VIDEOS WERE AWESOME!!! You could even use them for in-person classes as like homework and use the other class times doing irats, trats and apps!
- I appreciate his organization and structure to the course.
- I appreciate the effort he went through to make the transition to online learning smoother, particularly providing the video-recorded lectures
- You put a lot of work into designing this course remotely, Dr. Haave and it really paid off!
- It was very evident that Dr. Haave put a ton of work into preparing the course for a virtual setting and it did not go unnoticed!
- Dr.Haave made the transition to online very smooth, especially with his very organized schedule for the semester.
- I really liked the asynchronous style that Dr. Haave employed in his class.
- [...] I still found the team-based active learning style to be helpful for better understanding the content and forcing us to stay caught up.
- I really like the aspects of team-based learning incorporated as it allows us to learn and collaborate.
- The most valuable part of the course was that the lecture videos were very useful and all of the quizzes were helpful in understanding the material.
- We were constantly tested throughout the term on all of the content, which helped reinforce it!
- I found the two-stage quizzes and team applications to be the most valuable. This enabled me to collaborate with other students and work together to find the correct answers.
- Dr. Haave is very passionate about teaching biochemistry to his students and you can tell that he really cares about his students.
- I also appreciated [sic] how Dr. Haave's had office hours.
- I'm glad the instructor was pretty flexible to our needs and usually gave us more time if it was required.
- I think group work really helps with Dr. Haave's classes. His classes are always so difficult and I need help from my peers to see things from a different perspective.
- [...] it was extremely difficult, exceeding the level of difficulty of any other class I have taken including classes of a more advanced level.
- By far the hardest course I ve taken [sic] at university.
- This course is ridiculously difficult.
- [...] there is just a sheer volume of content that must be gone through and explained.
- The expectations in this course far exceed any other course at the same level.
- The course load requirements for this class are greater than the rest of my classes combined.
- We've learned so much in this course that it feels like an information overload.
- Honestly, none
- N/A.
- I found the fact that we had a RAT every single week to be a bit much and overwhelming at times.
- I found the online format made communication with team members more challenging, as it was more difficult to receive social cues and contribute without completely interrupting others (and of course occasional internet connection problems!). While it was still beneficial to work as a team, these challenges made APPs take longer than I think they normally would, and/or not as well discussed.
- [...] the online delivery was excellent.
- I thought that sometimes the mini-lectures got too long as you couldn't complete them in the time usually allotted for the class.
- The only complaint is that the lectures were quite long, requiring a lot of time that needed to be dedicated to this course in particular, but I also understand that there is just a sheer volume of content that must be gone through and explained.
- The lecture videos were excellent, and the slideshows were very helpful! The reading guides and the textbook was also very useful.
Discussion
The comments and ratings from my Fall 2020 cohort of B/C 381 students are very positive. In the Spring of 2020 when I realized that our university was going to be fully online for the 2020/21 academic year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, I spent all of my available work time on retooling the five courses I was going to teach from being delivered fully F2F to fully online. This required a rethinking of how I would implement TBL in my courses and how I would best support my students learning as they worked from wherever they were living. Many of the teaching workshops that I attended hosted by the UofA's Centre for Teaching and Learning, or oCUBE, UBEA, ACUBE, COPLAC, STLHE, The TBL Collaborative, and The Teaching Professor suggested that the best way to support students' online learning was to deliver our teaching with a mix of synchronous and asynchronous activities. I already had PDFs of my lecture slideshows available for students to use on their own, but the biggest take-home message I heard in all of these workshops was not to do live lecturing online and to instead pre-record short mini-lectures that students could watch on their own time and at their own pace. This is how I spent the bulk of my time during the Spring and Summer of 2020 with additional recording after classes began. This was an awful lot of work in planning, video recording, editing and posting the files in the proper format for sharing with our students through our university's LMS. I was unable to be actively engaged in my scholarship as a result until the Spring of 2021.
So, I am very gratified that my efforts were recognized by my students as evidenced by the SRIs I received from them. I am especially pleased by the positive comments I received about my pre-recorded video minilectures and the way that I implemented TBL in an online setting. Also, my experiment with using class time for office hours and encouraging students to join me on Zoom with their questions was well received by students. As a result, I feel that the time and effort I devoted to retooling my courses for online teaching and learning and the expense of my scholarship were justified.
The only thing that causes me concern is the difficulty and the workload that some (but not all) students found problematic which is an ongoing issue for the courses I teach. I am not sure what to do about this other than to carefully winnow the amount of material I teach in my courses which I have been doing for a number of years. Traditionally, a 3rd-year biochemistry course is a very challenging course at any university. I know for myself that my own undergraduate course in metabolism was an incredibly challenging yet fascinating course in my third year. Yet, I am concerned about the potential "tyranny of content" in this course (Petersen et al, 2020). I think of the tyranny of content in terms of how Paulo Freire considers the transmission of knowledge to be oppressive (his banking model of instruction). When there is too much content to be learned by students transmitted by instructors this limits students' ability to think and apply what they have learned. However, my implementation of TBL as the instructional strategy in my courses mitigates the oppressive nature of teaching by knowledge transmission. TBL mitigates the potential for the tyranny of content by explicitly making space to apply what they have learned and think about the implications of what they are learning. Freire (2018) advocates for problem-based learning as a liberating education because it encourages and supports students to think about what they are learning in their lived world. The framework of TBL ensures this occurs through the establishment of stable learning communities (teams) and well-implemented RAP and Apps. What I mean by well-implemented is that it is difficult for instructors to design appropriate RAPs and Apps that are within students' zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978). It is no easy task to design applications of learning that are difficult for students to solve on their own but are solvable within a team or learning community because this is so dependent upon the material being learned, the year level of the course, and students' own lived experience. But this is the work of any instructor.
I think this is why some students in B/C 381 expressed dismay at the workload and difficulty of the course whereas other students simply acknowledged that it was a challenge to be met. Students who have well-learned prerequisite material for Intermediary Metabolism will be well-positioned to meet the challenge. In contrast, students who have performed more poorly in prerequisite courses do accumulate a knowledge deficit that is difficult to overcome when they find themselves in a challenging course like biochemistry. On the other hand, it is incumbent upon the instructor to meet students where they are in their learning journey. This of course is best done in a one-on-one mentoring capacity. In contrast, when instructors are faced with a class of many students, they need to pitch their teaching to the majority of students; sadly some students' learning needs may not be met if they exceed the capacity of an instructor to meet them where they are in their learning journey given the constraints of instructor's own lived experience as a teacher, researcher, committee member, community member, and family member.
The other constraint on teachers is our professional responsibility to ensure that students meet the learning expectations of subsequent courses and professional programs. This consideration is significant in the courses I teach (biochemistry, molecular cell biology, histology) which are typically of interest in health science programs. Hence, it is my job to ensure that students in these courses achieve a certain mastery of the discipline which includes thinking in the disciplinary language. Thus, as an instructor, I am caught in the tension of meeting the professional expectations of my discipline with the learning expectations and needs of my students. I do get this balance right for most students, but disappointingly not for all students as indicated in some of the comments above. I take solace in the fact that I am well-meeting the learning needs of the majority of my students.
Resources
Brookfield, S. (1998). Critically reflective practice. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 18(4), 197–205.
Freire, P. (2018). Pedagogy of the oppressed (50th anniv). Bloomsbury Academic. [The 30th anniversary edition is available online here.]
Petersen, C. I., Baepler, P., Beitz, A., Ching, P., Gorman, K. S., Neudauer, C. L., Rozaitis, W., Walker, J. D., & Wingert, D. (2020). The tyranny of content: “Content coverage” as a barrier to evidence-based teaching approaches and ways to overcome it. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 19(2), ar17.
Sibley, J. (2018). LearnTBL. https://learntbl.ca/
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Interaction between learning and development. In M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman (Eds.), Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (pp. 79–91). Harvard University Press.
