Lesley J. Lluka

A Set of Vertically Integrated Inquiry-Based Practical Curricula that Develop Scientific Thinking Skills for Large Cohorts of Undergraduate Students.

Science graduates require critical thinking skills to deal with the complex problems they will face in their 21st century workplaces. Inquiry-based curricula can provide students with the opportunities to develop such critical thinking skills; however, evidence suggests that an inappropriate level of autonomy provided to underprepared students may not only be daunting to students but also detrimental to their learning. After a major review of the Bachelor of Science, we developed, implemented, and evaluated a series of three vertically integrated courses with inquiry-style laboratory practicals for early-stage undergraduate students in biomedical science. These practical curricula were designed so that students would work with increasing autonomy and ownership of their research projects to develop increasingly advanced scientific thinking and communication skills. Students undertaking the first iteration of these three vertically integrated courses reported learning gains in course content as well as skills in scientific writing, hypothesis construction, experimental design, data analysis, and interpreting results. Students also demonstrated increasing skills in both hypothesis formulation and communication of findings as a result of participating in the inquiry-based curricula and completing the associated practical assessment tasks. Here, we report the specific aspects of the curricula that students reported as having the greatest impact on their learning and the particular elements of hypothesis formulation and communication of findings that were more challenging for students to master. These findings provide important implications for science educators concerned with designing curricula to promote scientific thinking and communication skills alongside content acquisition.

Changes in Biology Self-Efficacy during a First-Year University Course.

Biology self-efficacy was measured in first-year students. Self-efficacy was lower in females than in males, most noticeably in high-achieving students. High school experience contributed to self-efficacy at the beginning of the semester, and this was replaced by progressive grades at the end of the semester. Self-efficacy did not correlate with exam grades.

The personal response: A novel writing assignment to engage first year students in large human biology classes†

The teaching of highly valued scientific writing skills in the first year of university is challenging. This report describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of a novel written assignment, The Personal Response and accompanying Peer Review, in the course, Human Biology (BIOL1015) at The University of Queensland. These assignments were the first assessment tasks of the course and were set early in the first semester of university. BIOL1015 had a diverse cohort of 319 first year students from five bachelor degree programs, primarily from Pharmacy and Human Movement Studies. Audio files in the form of interviews with eminent biomedical scientists were obtained from a leading public radio program. Students used these files as triggers to submit a short but highly structured assignment written from a personal perspective and in an expressive style. Evaluations revealed that overall, students found the task interesting and challenging. Students performed well, regardless of their background knowledge, disciplinary interest, or preference for topics within human biology. This study demonstrated that The Personal Response was an appropriate task for these first year students of human biology. It represents an alternative to traditional essay writing.

Are they using my feedback? The extent of students’ feedback use has a large impact on subsequent academic performance

Feedback is known to have a large influence on student learning gains, and the emergence of online tools has greatly enhanced the opportunity for delivering timely, expressive, digital feedback and for investigating its learning impacts. However, to date there have been no large quantitative investigations of the feedback provided by large teams of markers, feedback use by large cohorts of students, nor its impact on students’ academic performance across successive assessment tasks. We have developed an innovative online system to collect large-scale data on digital feedback provision and use. Our markers (n = 38) used both audio and typed feedback modalities extensively, providing 388 ± 4 and 1126 ± 37 words per report for first- and second-year students, respectively. Furthermore, 92% of first year and 85% of second-year students accessed their feedback, with 58% accessing their feedback for over an hour. Lastly, the amount of time students spent interacting with feedback is significantly related to the rate of improvement in subsequent assessment tasks. This study challenges assertions that many students do not collect, or use, their feedback. More importantly, we offer novel insights into the relationships between feedback provision, feedback use and successful academic outcomes.

Student Perceptions of Social Learning Space: Designing and Implementing a Co-operative Assessment Task in Pharmacology

Abstract We report findings from a case study of co-operative, group-based assessment in Pharmacology for second-year undergraduates at The University of Queensland, Australia. Students enrolled in the 2005 Bachelor of Science and 2006 Bachelor of Pharmacy degree programs, were early users of the university’s new Collaborative Teaching and Learning Centre (CTLC), a specialised social learning space. A pre-existing, traditionally taught Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) module on the topic of Drug Dependence was common to the courses for Science and Pharmacy students. We describe how this module was redesigned as part of a 3-hour, co-operative assignment weighted as 5%. Details of the co-operative learning principles, the teaching strategy and the assessment design are documented. Most students achieved high academic results: Science (2005) mean ± SD = 79.5±14.8%, n = 232; Pharmacy (2006) mean ± SD = 83.3±13.6%, n = 186. From post-task opinion surveys and focus group interviews, both student cohorts perceived that CTLC facilities and the group work helped them learn about Drug Dependence. These data confirmed that most students felt they worked co-operatively to complete the assessment. Time and understanding the new task were the main reported stressors.