Mar Carrió

The effectiveness of the hybrid problem-based learning approach in the teaching of biology: a comparison with lecture-based learning

Although several studies have shown that the problem-based learning (PBL) method promotes relevant professional skills as well as critical thinking and lifelong learning, some teachers remain sceptical regarding whether PBL is also adequate in acquiring the factual knowledge that students need. In this article, we describe an experience in which PBL has been introduced as an interdisciplinary activity in the teaching of students in the bachelor degree of biology, with special attention on the analysis of contextualised complex problems. This experience was a part of a traditional curriculum and roughly 20% of the entire learning time was devoted to it. We named this teaching approach hybrid problem-based learning (H-PBL) curriculum, in contrast to the lecture-based learning (LBL) traditional curriculum. The study reported here aims to answer a fundamental question: are there differences between both models in the students’ factual knowledge acquisition? The results of this study have failed to show significant differences in factual knowledge acquisition between both groups of students. We conclude that the use of an interdisciplinary H-PBL approach has no deleterious effect on the recall of factual knowledge, while it may permit the simultaneous development of other professional skills, which could be more difficult to attain in traditional curricula based mainly on the lecture-based method.

Using Role Play to Debate Animal Testing

The use of animals in biomedical research is a socio-scientific issue in which decision-making is complicated. In this article, we describe an experience involving a role play activity performed during school visits to the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB) to debate animal testing. Role playing games require students to defend different positions and permit participants to debate and reflect on their personal opinions. A total of 262 students from 15- to 30-years-old participated in the activity. The article presents an analysis of the students’ opinions on this topic before and after performing the activity. Our results show that students actively took part in debate and made use of the new information provided by the game, especially the legal aspects. In conclusion, the role play activity helped participants to create a more informed opinion, stimulated critical thinking and argumentation skills. We encourage science teachers to use role playing games to discuss socio-scientific issues.

Ldshake and the “Biologia En Context” Teacher Community Across High Schools

Previous chapters present significant recent contributions around supporting authoring of learning designs, such as ScenEdit (Emin & Pernin, this volume Chapter 13), CADMOS (Katsamani, Retalis, & Boulakis, 2012) or OpenGLM (Derntl, this volume Chapter 12). Other multiple learning design tools have been also reported in the literature, as also explained in the previous chapters.

Teaching Responsible Research and Innovation: A Phronetic Perspective

Across the European research area and beyond, efforts are being mobilized to align research and innovation processes and products with societal values and needs, and to create mechanisms for inclusive priority setting and knowledge production. A central concern is how to foster a culture of “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI) among scientists and engineers. This paper focuses on RRI teaching at higher education institutions. On the basis of interviews and reviews of academic and policy documents, it highlights the generic aspects of teaching aimed at invoking a sense of care and societal obligation, and provides a set of exemplary cases of RRI-related teaching. It argues that the Aristotelian concept of phronesis can capture core properties of the objectives of RRI-related teaching activities. Teaching should nurture the students’ capacity in terms of practical wisdom, practical ethics, or administrative ability in order to enable them to act virtuously and responsibly in contexts which are often characterized by uncertainty, contention, and controversy.