I can’t entirely fault the textbook authors for this. In
microbiology, while there are some core concepts and basic frameworks, it
pretty quickly devolves into the fire-hose of random facts. There are so many microbes
doing so many different things in so many different environments that things
don’t seem to really hang together until you’re getting in closer than a
general microbiology course really allows. Scientists studying carbon
metabolism have cocultured Desulfovibrio
vulgaris and Methanococcus
maripaludis, where they fairly quickly form a synergistic relationship
despite the fact that they don’t coexist in the wild. The metabolic interplay
is fascinating to me, even though my organic chemistry is pretty weak, and I’ve
been watching the publications on their coevolution with great interest. But
that’s maybe a few sentences in a microbiology textbook, if that, probably
stuck in between a bunch of facts about methanogen metabolism. Where does it
belong? How much of the story fits in? Do the students really need to know it?
Do the students need to know it? There’s a bad assumption at
the base of this question – students need to learn things in this class because
otherwise they won’t know it for their next class in the series. Our pre-med
students need to know this to prepare them for med school. This [insert fact
here] is critical for our students’ futures.
Really? I memorized the Krebs cycle three times in college,
once to the level of drawing the structures, memorizing the enzymes, and
following each carbon, ATP, NAD, and NADP through the whole thing. I promptly
forgot it each and every time. I have never needed to know it since, and if I
did, I have at least three different textbooks in my apartment that cover it in
excruciating detail. In learning it, I did get a sense of the complexity of
metabolism, the utility of cycles, and the difficulties of maintaining redox
balance. However, I mostly learned that if I could memorize enough random facts
for the test, I’d do OK even if my conceptual understanding was poor to
nonexistent.
That isn’t useful. That isn’t how we make good scientists.
When trying to come up with a course plan for an Introductory
Microbiology course, I got the idea that maybe I don’t need a textbook. What
are the things that I want students to learn from my class? Critical thinking,
how to read a scientific article, how to work in a group, how to look up the
things they need to know, basic lab techniques, how to construct a framework
for the facts to hang off of so that they are part of a whole. These aren’t
things that they’re going to find in a textbook, nor are they by and large
things that I can teach in a lecture.
Crap. Am I just screwed, then?
Maybe not. I’ve been reading a fair number of research
articles on the science of teaching, and a few themes keep popping up:
-
Students are smarter than we give them credit
for
-
If we teach things that are relevant to their
interests, they will learn happily
-
Facts fade, skills stick
-
The more active they are, the more they buy in
to the process
These are gross generalizations, of course, but how can I
apply them to my nefarious plans?
-
Given them hard material and the boost they need
to rise to the challenge
-
Ask them what they want to know and relate
things to their interests
-
Teach skills
-
Don’t lecture if you can help it
Yeah, yeah, that sounds nice and all, but how do I plan to
accomplish it?
Step one is demolishing the usual course material and
rebuilding it from the ground up. The students are going to learn primarily
from review articles, research articles, and a couple seminars from people
doing cool research. And no, I will ask them to dumb it down; I won’t let them
dumb it down if I can possibly help it. I will probably recommend that students
rent or purchase a basic microbiology textbook, something to use as a reference
that’s a bit more reliable and deeper than Wikipedia. However, since I’m not
going to care which textbook or which edition it is, provided it’s no more than
a decade old, the financial burden isn’t very great. (At the moment, there’s
plenty of options on Half.com for under $20 including shipping, under $40 if
you’re picky about getting a pristine book.) Students could either buy a bound
course book of all the articles to be read for class, or they could just
download them from the course website and print them or read them
electronically at their preference. The bound course book could cost as much as
$50, but probably less.
(Why mention the prices? The price of textbooks can be a
major burden on financially strapped students, with per-term costs topping $500
for some terms in certain majors. That’s a whole ‘nother issue with the way we
currently teach college courses.)
Step two is gutting the lectures and putting new stuff in
the space that frees up. For me personally, I enjoy preparing a lecture but I
don’t particularly like giving it. It’s fun to figure out what’s important,
what’s cool, how to tell a store, where to ask questions to get the students
engaged. And then I stand in front of a room full of students set to receive
mode, and getting responses is like pulling teeth. After a little while, a few
of them start responding, but those few will then dominate the responses for
the rest of class if not the rest of the term. I’ve still got 90% of the
students staring blankly and waiting for me to go to the next slide already.
What if I let the students discuss the material in small groups and then ask
the questions they have?
Step three is coming up with some better tests. In smaller
(sub-50) classes, I can have students do projects, presentations, and papers.
But what about bigger classes? I’ll admit, this is where I’m stumped. I want to
do right by the students and test them on their skills and conceptual
understanding rather than on trivia, but other than multiple choice questions
an article they read during the test period, what can I do that I will
physically be able to grade? This is probably something that will have to be
tested and refined in the classroom over a number of years.
So, what will this look like? The first day, unfortunately,
will still be a lot of lecture. There’s always administrivia to cover, I’ll
have to explain the non-standard class format, and I’ll want to go over how to
read a scientific paper. The second day would be devoted to dissecting a short
and relatively simple research article in small groups and as a class, followed
by a brief overview of the new vocabulary and concepts important for the
following class’s paper.
From then on, class starts with students breaking up into
small groups to discuss that class’s paper for 10-15 minutes. During that time,
the professor and any TAs would be circulating to answer basic questions. After
that, the class would reconvene and it would be question-and-answer time. This
part will be the scariest for me, as I’ll never be able to prepare well enough
to be able to answer all the questions. However, the questions will be worth
it. I’ve found that a good question can get to the heart of the matter faster
than anything else, and the questions that novices answer are often just that
sort. In an ideal universe, students would also jump in to answer questions
whenever they were able. In the unlikely event that students run out of
questions, it’s back to small groups to discuss things like finer points of
methods, potential next steps, and questions raised by the conclusions of the
paper. Finally, class would conclude with an overview of new vocabulary, methods,
concepts, etc. in the next class’s paper.
To me, it sounds simultaneously like a genius idea and one
of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever had. Of course students will hate it. Of
course it will go down in flames. Of course it won’t actually help them learn
anything. But I’m basing those assumptions on long painful experiences
lecturing a room full of blank staring faces and the tops of heads. Those
students would crash and burn in this planned curriculum. However, the students
in the lab sections that I taught, the students who came to my office hours,
the undergrad helpers in labs I’ve worked in, they would have all risen to the
challenge and astonished me. And they are the same students as the first group,
it’s just that they just had something to do other than sit back and let
somebody pour facts in their ear. They were doing. They were actively engaged.
Yes, some students will mutiny. Some students who just want
the grade, or really only know how to study by memorizing, or who just don’t
know how to cope with the more nebulous expectations will absolutely hate this
approach. I’m hoping to convince “just the grade ma’am” students that this
stuff is awesome and worth caring about. I’m hoping to teach the rote-robots
new ways to learn. I’m hoping to teach the perfectionists and nervous students
like me that they can do something new and weird and different, that they can
not only do it but excel at it.
I want to make a course that’s better in a thousand small
ways. I want to get students excited about science. I want to give my students
useful skills, not just a book full of facts. Most of all, I want to be able to
design my course without being bored to death by the textbook myself. I’ve
discovered the hard way that falling asleep on a textbook gives you a terrible
crick in your neck and the drool will glue the pages together like nobody’s
business.
