Lecture and Laboratory Connection or Learning Gap? Biology 105 Faculty Inquiry Group (FIG) Report (Spring 2012) Taylor Anderson‐McGill June Han Louisa Villeneuve Pablo Weaver Introduction In identifying a learning gap to focus on for the spring 2012 semester, FIG members used personal teaching experiences, Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) and student feedback to collaboratively select an appropriate topic. One recurring idea revolved around how to better assist students in connecting concepts taught in lecture and their corresponding labs. Lab instructors are specifically advised to assist students in understanding that lab experiments are designed to be practical applications of theories covered in lecture via an introductory lecture at the beginning of all lab sessions. Given that these instructions are necessary indicates that students in the past have struggled to make this association. After discussing personal experiences, the FIG participants agreed that this had been, and continues to be an issue. In addition, a BIO 105 SLO states that assessment of creative, critical and analytical thinking for the major concepts covered during the semester are to be performed through group discussions, lab reports, and examinations (i.e. in both lecture and lab components). Thus, if student comprehension from lecture to lab sections (and vice versa) could be improved, overall scores and understanding might be positively affected. For these reasons, the connection or lack thereof between lecture and lab was judged to be an appropriate learning gap to focus on. After selecting the learning gap, several ideas for how to approach the problem were discussed. We decided on two main objectives: first, to evaluate if and to what degree students perceived a connection between lecture and lab components of the course, and second, design an experiment to attempt to help them bridge the components of the class. For the experimental portion of the project, group members agreed that visual demonstrations often are dramatic and memorable and could be an excellent way to connect material from lecture to the lab. Exercise five (Cell Membrane: transport of molecules) focuses on diffusion and osmosis in living cells and historically is a lab that students struggle with. In addition, the lab occurred during the seventh week of the semester, providing sufficient time to develop the project and analyze the resulting data prior to the end of the semester. For these reasons, it was selected as the target lab, and various visual demonstrations were discussed that could be performed/observed in both lecture and lab settings. Because all 105 labs have weekly lab quizzes designed to test understanding from the previous week’s material, a quiz question was judged to be the most appropriate means of quantifying our results. Methods Initial Survey: An initial survey was designed to ask all enrolled students to what degree they thought their Bio 105 lecture and lab were connected. For each of the first four lab exercises, they were asked to rank the connection between lab and lecture concepts (1= not at all connected, 2= very loosely connected, 3= somewhat connected, or 4= very connected). The initial survey was included as the last question on their first lab practical exam and was collected anonymously. The rankings for each lab exercise were then averaged and compared. (Survey is appended to report) “Naked” egg demonstration: Between the four members of this Faculty Inquiry Group (FIG), we teach five Bio 105 lectures and ten Bio 105 laboratories. An egg demonstration was designed to illustrate osmosis and the concept of tonicity. The eggs were prepared by first soaking them in vinegar for two to three days followed by immersing half of the eggs in water and the other half in corn syrup for two days. The eggs in water swelled due to the water being hypotonic to the egg, while the eggs in corn syrup shrank due to the corn syrup being hypertonic to the egg, thus demonstrating the movement of water from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration via osmosis. This egg demonstration was given to three of the Bio 105 lectures mentioned above and to four of the Bio 105 labs mentioned above. The two lectures and six labs that did not receive the egg demonstration were uses as our controls. Quiz on Osmosis: Following the Transport of Molecules lab, students were given their weekly quiz which included a five point section on osmosis. The same five point section was given to all ten of the FIGs’ Bio105 labs. Student scores for the five point osmosis section were included in the tracking of students who received two egg demonstrations (one in lecture and the other in lab), those who received only one egg demonstration (either in lecture or in lab), and those who did not receive the egg demonstration. We analyzed this data to determine whether or not having the same demonstration in lecture and lab increased student scores on the quiz, and whether having simply one demonstration increased student quiz scores relative to those students who did not receive the egg demonstration. (Quiz is appended to report) Second Survey: A second survey was designed to determine whether concepts in lecture helped students to better understand the lab activities and whether activities in the laboratory exercises improved student understanding of lecture material. The second survey also provided students the opportunity to explain their responses. The second survey used a wider scale of one to ten with one being strongly disagree to ten being strongly agree. This survey covered the next four lab exercises in our sequence and was administered to all students enrolled in Bio 105 the week after the second lab practical. (Second survey is appended to report) Results Initial Survey: We received a total of 576 respondents to our initial survey regarding the perceived level of connection between lecture concepts and our first four laboratory activities. Responses for each of the labs were fairly consistent, and each mean was above the level of “somewhat connected”. Although there was a high level of variability in the data, as reflected by the standard deviations, Dimensional Analysis (mean=3.12, Stdv=0.84) and Biochemistry (mean=3.30, stdv=0.77) received the better scores, while Scientific Measurement, (mean=3.02, stdv=0.87) and Microscopy (mean=3.08, stdv=0.85) received the lowest scores (Figure 1). 4
How connected were each of these labs to lecture topics?
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Figure 1. Results from Survey 1, an analysis of student responses (N=576) to the level of connectivity between lecture and laboratory concepts in the first four labs of the semester. On the scale, 1 represented “not at all connected”, 2 equals “very loosely connected”, 3 was “somewhat connected” and 4 represented “very connected.” Quiz on Osmosis: To assess the effects of our egg demonstration on student comprehension, we reached 83 total students with the egg demonstration, with 10 students receiving the demonstration in both lecture and lab and 73 students receiving the demonstration once, either in lecture or in lab. Assessments were given to each of the students mentioned above, as well as 76 students who did not see the egg demonstration. Out of a possible of 5 points, the group receiving two egg demos (lecture and lab) scored the highest (mean=3.45, stdv=1.47, N=10), followed by the group that received 1 egg demo in lecture or lab (mean=3.32, stdv=0.88. N=73), and the group with no exposure to the egg demo scored the lowest (mean =3.17, stdv=1.33, N=76) (Figure 2). However, due to the high level of variance, no group’s score was significantly higher than another (ANOVA, P=0.7). Comparison of student groups on quiz scores
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Figure 2. A comparison of student assessment scores following exposure to varying numbers of egg demonstrations, meant to reinforce the concepts of biological membranes and tonicity. Although the group that received two exposures to the egg demo scored the highest, the difference was not significant (ANOVA, P=0.7) Second Survey: For our second survey, we asked students to evaluate how well lecture and lab complemented each other in terms of strengthening student comprehension. At the time of this report, 103 surveys have been analyzed. All topic areas scored at or above 7.3 out of a possible 10 points, meaning that students found the topics in both lecture and lab to be helpful in better understanding the concepts (Figure 3). In three of the four topic areas, (Cell Membranes, Photosynthesis, and Cell Respiration), the labs scored higher than the lecture, meaning that students were better able to reinforce the concepts in lab and were better prepared for lecture. In the Mitosis and Meiosis lab, both scores were high, with the lecture score slightly better than the lab score (Figure 3). Level of agreement with statement (1=Strongly disagree, 10=Strongly agree)
White bars: Learning the concepts in lecture helped me better understand the lab activities
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Figure 3: Results from Survey 2. Students responded to how well lecture content prepared them for lab and how well laboratory activities improved their understanding of lecture material. Scores ranged from 1‐10, with 10 being the highest. Conclusion and Implications Our findings indicate that students perceive that the lecture and laboratory components of Biology 105 are at least “somewhat connected” for the first four laboratory experiments. This feedback actually came as a positive surprise to the faculty. Even for the first set of experiments that focus largely on mathematics and calculations, students were able to see the relation of those skills to material covered in lecture. The results from the second student survey also indicated student acknowledgement of the benefit of learning biology in these two types of class settings. For the majority of the experiments assessed, students found that the lab activities helped their learning in lecture more than the other way around. That is, students perceived the laboratory component of the course to play a supporting role for their learning in lecture. The qualitative comments on the second survey are still in the process of being analyzed. A cursory review of these comments show on the positive side – students’ appreciation of applying lecture concepts in a hands‐on manner in lab, and on the negative side – students’ frustration with a disconnect between the timing and teaching of concepts in both classes. Some students feel that material covered in lab comes too many weeks removed from when it was first explained in lecture. And on the other hand, a few students remarked that they had not been introduced to a topic in lecture and it was already the focus of the week’s laboratory activities. This disconnect in timing lecture and laboratory coverage of concepts seemed to begin starting with Exercise 8: Mitosis and Meiosis. The results from the osmosis “naked egg” demo showed a trend where students who observed the demo in both lecture and lab performed better on their quizzes than students who only witnessed the demo in one class and even better than students who never saw the demo. While this trend confirms our hypothesis that having a visual demo in both classes should reinforce learning, the results were not statistically significant. Nonetheless, the demo is easy to implement and visually memorable to students and serves as a worthwhile teaching tool. Overall, our findings suggest that there is room for improving the learning connection between lecture and laboratory. First, the faculty can revise lecture and/or laboratory schedules to more closely align the timing of when similar concepts are covered. In particular, lecture instructors could work to make sure they cover the necessary topics prior to students encountering them in lab. Based on our data, this seemed to be most crucial for the cell reproduction and genetics material. Next, students’ responses on the two surveys also seemed to indicate that certain laboratory experiments were too complicated for them to see the connection to lecture material. In particular, the cell membrane transport (Exercise 5) and cellular respiration (Exercise 7) experiments received the lowest scores in terms of helpfulness in understanding lecture material and vice versa. Faculty may need to spend more time explaining these difficult to understand concepts in lecture. Also, replacing some of the more complicated elements of these two experiments with simpler demonstrations in lab may aid learning. These two experiments involve many reagents, assays, and reactions. Reducing the number of assays performed may lessen confusion while still teaching the same concept. The next two implications for practice focus more on the lecture component of the course. Because the laboratory sections are all uniform in terms of schedule and activities to be covered, lecture instructors may be in position to be more flexible to enact change that would affect students’ overall experience in the course. The FIG members propose creating an electronic “demo scrapbook” that all instructors could access. These would include lab‐like demonstrations, like the osmosis “naked eggs”, that could be performed in a lecture hall setting to give students a visual for how concepts could be applied. The different faculty in the department could contribute and post demonstrations that they use in their class. Lastly, encouraging lecture faculty to preview and/or review laboratory experiments in lecture would help increase students’ learning connection. This could be done through group discussions, showing pictures of the week’s laboratory set‐up or results, or reviewing data and graphs from the experiments. In sum, while students perceived some learning connection between lecture and laboratory, that connection should be clear and strong in order to deepen student learning of biology. Although the learning gap addressed may require larger curriculum changes, some of the recommendations are quite simple and easy to enact. Our goal is that the findings from this project would be practical and beneficial in improving student learning. Furthermore, we hope that faculty might continue the conversations and collaborations like that sponsored by this FIG. Appendix A: Initial Student Survey The biology department is conducting a survey to see how well our Bio 105 lecture and lab course content is coordinated. This survey is completely anonymous and will not affect your grade in the course. The results will be used to help instruction and curriculum design. Thank you for your participation. How well do you feel each of the labs you completed connected with concepts covered in your lecture class? Circle the number that corresponds to your response. Exercise 1: Metric System, Scientific Method, and Graphic Analysis Not at all connected 1 Very loosely connected 2 Somewhat connected 3 Very connected 4 Exercise 2: Scientific Measurement and Analysis (Color absorption and spectrophotometer) Not at all connected 1 Very loosely connected 2 Somewhat connected 3 Very connected 4 Very loosely connected 2 Somewhat connected 3 Very connected 4 Very loosely connected 2 Somewhat connected 3 Very connected 4 Exercise 3: Biochemistry Not at all connected 1 Exercise 4: Microscopy Not at all connected 1 Appendix B: Osmosis Quiz Question QUIZ The following is a diagram of a human blood cell (0.9% NaCl) placed in salt water (3% NaCl). Circles indicate salt (NaCl), which cannot cross the membrane. a) In the figure, label which region is hypertonic and which region is hypotonic. (2pts) b) Add an arrow indicating the direction water will move in this system. (1pt) c) What would happen to the cell (swell, shrink, remain the same) if it were placed in a freshwater solution (0% NaCl)? How does osmosis help explain this? (2pts) Appendix B: Second Student Survey Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements for the four laboratory exercises listed: Exercise 5: Cell Membranes: Transport of Molecules Learning the concepts in lecture helped me better understand the lab activities: Strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Strongly agree Performing the activities in the laboratory exercises improved my understanding of lecture material. Strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Strongly agree Please provide comments to explain your response:
Exercise6: Photosynthesis Learning the concepts in lecture helped me better understand the lab activities: Strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Strongly agree Performing the activities in the laboratory exercises improved my understanding of lecture material. Strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Strongly agree Please provide comments to explain your response: Exercise 7: Aerobic and Anaerobic Cellular Respiration Learning the concepts in lecture helped me better understand the lab activities: Strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Strongly agree Performing the activities in the laboratory exercises improved my understanding of lecture material. Strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Strongly agree Please provide comments to explain your response: Exercise 8: Reproduction and Cell Division: Mitosis and Meiosis Learning the concepts in lecture helped me better understand the lab activities: Strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Strongly agree Performing the activities in the laboratory exercises improved my understanding of lecture material. Strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Strongly agree Please provide comments to explain your response: