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 A rapid increase in first-year Microbiology student numbers (90 to 750) and the lack of laboratory infrastructure to effectively do laboratory-based practicals inspired me to rethink the way in which we teach our students. I started off by arguing that students should take responsibility for their own learning and that they should use the university as a set of resources mostly under their control. The challenge was to teach the students some basic principles in Microbiology, giving them hands-on experience without them having to be in a laboratory. A typical semester runs over a 13 week period, with one laboratory practical session scheduled per week. I therefore decided to select 13 principles in Microbiology that could be taught by experimentation outside of the laboratory. This turned out to be easier than I anticipated. I then planned each of the 13 experiments with their respective requirements in terms of apparatus, chemicals and other tools and designed a kit containing all these components. This would enable the student to do the experiments in their own time and report back formally on a weekly basis. In order to assist the student with accessing information an e-learning resource was created. The e-learning resource was essentially a web portal based on selected topics pertaining to the course. It was structured to assure quality, reliability and access. This gateway put the students directly in touch with the source material, leading to easily navigable predefined areas. This prevented students from being distracted by trivia and irrelevant material along the way. There is no doubt that the Web is a powerful resource that supports the contextual form of knowledge that is developing alongside the disciplinary knowledge (Laurillard, 2008).
The objectives of this project were to:
- Co-produce knowledge through out of the laboratory activity to teach basic principles in Microbiology.
- Create an e-learning resource for Microbiology students.
A kit was constructed containing all the materials that the student would need for the 13 experiments during the semester. Each student received such a kit. The exact procedure for each experiment was discussed every week in a plenary lecture with all the students.
The following example illustrates a typical experiment, focusing on a specific principle that would substitute a laboratory-based practical to teach that principle. When studying bacteria, it is fundamentally important to know what the effect is of environmental conditions that affect their growth and survival. One such element is temperature. A laboratory-based practical to demonstrate the effect of temperature on bacterial growth would entail preparing 3 test tubes per student, each containing bacterial culture medium. These are then inoculated with a specific bacterium and incubated at three different temperatures. The growth is monitored over a period of 4 to 5 days. The logistics to prepare the materials are imposing, involving more than 2000 test tubes containing culture medium that has to be prepared. These then have to sterilized in an autoclave, put out onto the benches, inoculated aseptically by the student or demonstrator, marked for each student, incubated at three temperatures in an incubator and daily inspected by each of the 750 students moving in and out of the laboratory for 4 to 5 days at different times to monitor the growth of the bacteria. This eventually amounts to chaos and a resulting unpleasant learning experience for everyone. Test tubes get misplaced, the wrong test tubes are used because these were not clearly marked and the student comebacks and complaints were taking up a significant amount of time. The out of the laboratory experiment involved getting each student to buy 3 cartons of milk. Each of these had to be placed at a different temperature, for example in the fridge, at room temperature and in a warm environment where the student was staying. Students would then inspect these cartons on a daily basis, monitoring the pH daily, using simple pH strips, and after 4 to 5 days write a report on their observations.
The feedback was structured in a template resembling the elements of a scientific publication. There would be the “Title” of the experiment, “Introduction”, “Materials and Methods”, “Results”, “Discussion”, “Conclusions” and “References”. The objective of the formal report was to familiarize the students with writing a scientific report and/or publication. This also presented the lecturer with the opportunity to teach the student the requirements for a good “Title” and that the “Introduction” covers at least the historical background, what is known about the subject, what is not known and what the objective of the experiment was. This orientated the students to what the expectation would be later on in their scientific career. In a similar fashion the requirements of the other sections mentioned above (proper referencing techniques, etc.) were taught and will not be elaborated upon here.
A simplistic approach was followed to create an e-learning resource. Firstly, the instructions for each of the experiments were placed on WEB-CT for easy access by the students. The second project involved creating a web portal, using the table of contents of the prescribed book and selecting the top websites on each topic. The web portal was designed using the programme “Flash”. This portal was made available on a CD to each student. It also allowed the student to browse the content of a particular website before connecting to it (Cloete and Atlas, 2006).
The outcomes of the project were positive:
- Negative student feedback about laboratory-based practicals in the past turned into positive feedback. Students indicated that they were having fun while learning.
- The experiments created a situational learning experience, embedding the knowledge generated due to the context of the learning experience.
- Students’ competence levels were increased.
- Students were taking responsibility for their own learning through ownership and the perceived value of what they were doing.
- The curiosity of the students was stimulated, with many of them asking for more materials to investigate new aspects that they had thought of.
- Laboratory chaos was negated.
- Substantial cost savings were made.
- Laboratory infrastructure became available for smaller groups of students in senior years.
- Student-centered learning was achieved, creating an interactive mode of teaching where the students were provided with a task environment within which they could generate, receive and implement feedback on actions appropriate to the task goal.
- The project succeeded in creating a discursive, adaptive, interactive and reflective teaching strategy as described by Laurillard (2008).
- Students enjoyed the flexibility of doing the work when it suited them.
- The e-learning platform allowed students to make their own links between topics and follow their own line of investigation.
In conclusion, I would like to agree with Twigg (1994) who said “our understanding of how people learn is growing, suggesting that increased individualization of the learning process is the way to respond to diverse learning styles brought by our students as they enter and re-enter the world of higher education”. I have also learned that higher education cannot change easily. Traditions, values and infrastructure create conditions that limit innovation. In the light of this, “academics face an unprecedented challenge to the traditions and values of the profession” (Laurillard, 2008). It is becoming more important that an excellent research professor should also be an excellent teacher and this would require training on how to teach better. Dearing (1972) reframed the aims of higher education, preserving the valued traditions by stating the following objectives:
- “To inspire and enable individuals to develop their capabilities …
- To increase knowledge and understanding for their own sake …
- To serve the needs of knowledge based economy …. and
- To play a major role in shaping a democratic, civilized, inclusive society”.
Dryden and Vos (2001) list 13 steps required for a 21st-century learning society. Some of these are: “learning how to use computers and the internet, catering to every individual learning style, learning how to learn and learning how to think, asking ourselves where we should teach and learning to keep the mind open and the communication clear”. We need a learning revolution. We need to see and act on the future ahead of our peers. We need to seriously rethink higher education in order to avoid irrelevance.
Cloete, T E and Atlas, R M. (2006). Basic and Applied Microbiology. Pretoria: Van Schaik.
Dearing, R. (1972). Higher Education in a Learning Society. National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, HMSO, ISBN, 1 85838 254 8.
Dryden, G and Vos, J. (2001). The Learning Revolution. Stafford: National Educational Press.
Laurillard, D. (2008). Rethinking University Teaching. 2nd Edition. London: Taylor and Francis.
Twigg, C. (1994). The changing definition of learning. Educom Review, 29 (4). |
