Meeting Abstract
In my 4th semester as an Assistant Professor, I was responsible for creating the course I was hired to teach – a new upper level lecture and lab course in biomechanics. However, I had no experience developing a course from scratch, only had a few hundred dollars for supplies, and did not have the ability to test labs before the semester started. By talking to students, I realized the answer to these problems lay in an authentic science approach that can bridge opportunities available in structured lab courses and independent research projects in faculty labs. Therefore, I structured my new course to emphasize the process of science, providing students an opportunity to gain valuable hands-on research experience without the selectivity and time commitment necessary for independent research. The expectation that experiments may not work as planned allowed flexibility to expand on or condense topics as necessary. Labs creatively utilized the campus wildlife center, departmental teaching specimen collections, previously collected research data, local invertebrate models, collaboration with my research lab or other teaching labs, and freely available software. Emphasis was on students gaining practical experience with research equipment, analyses, software, and communication techniques that could be added to their CV. Students often asked if we could do more and commented that they more fully understood the nature and process of science. Students also increased in knowledge and understanding of comparative biomechanics by 14.5% on average, with up to a 40% increase individually. Therefore, utilizing an authentic science approach to build new lab courses can be an effective way to enhance student learning while minimizing course prep constraints and facilitating overlap between research and teaching interests.
