Meeting Abstract
P1.195 Saturday, Jan. 4 15:30 How to use multiple stepped authentic research projects to build critical thinking and quantitative reasoning skills in biology courses MULLER, UK; California State University Fresno umuller@csufresno.edu
Modern STEM education has as a goal to increase science and information literacy. Yet many non-majors science courses are still taught as watered-down majors courses, focusing on what STEM majors should know rather than on educating non-STEM majors in how to make sense and use of science. Many major science courses focus on content delivery rather than building skills. I have redesigned a non-majors and several upper-division biology courses (comparative animal physiology, comparative vertebrate morphology) to build students’ academic skills (critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, information literacy, communication). The non-majors biology course now uses issue-driven learning – students research authentic, relevant questions to informed citizens, such as the MMR vaccine scandal, health food myths, conservation and resource management issues, to build information and science literacy, and then write information brochures to build communication skills. The vertebrate morphology course teaches functional morphology of locomotion and quantitative reasoning through a succession of stepped mini-projects that cumulate in an authentic research project. Inquiry-based learning can be achieved without increasing instructor workload for grading by using student peer review. To circumvent the pitfalls of student peer review, I developed assignments that develop students’ content expertise before they peer review other students, and I developed rubrics that focus peer reviewers on core criteria to assess quality. Furthermore, I use student peer reviews like an editor: peer reviews do not determine the grade of an assignment; instead, looking at the overall tenor of typically 5 to 6 student reviews per assignment helps me to more quickly arrive at a fair grade. I will present example assignments to demonstrate my redesign philosophy.
