Cell Biol Educ 4(2): 123-124 2005
DOI: 10.1187/cbe.05-01-0055
© 2005 American Society for Cell Biology
Points of View: A Survey of Survey Courses: Are They Effective?
Running out of Hands: Designing a Modern Biology Curriculum
Arri Eisen
Program in Science & Society Department of Biology Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322
Note from the Editors Points of View (POV) addresses
issues faced by many people within the life science education community.
Cell Biology Education (CBE) publishes the POV Feature to present two or
more opinions published in tandem on a common topic. We consider POVs to be
"Op-Ed" pieces designed to stimulate thought and dialogue on
significant educational issues. Each author had the opportunity to revise or
add to his/her POV after reading drafts of the other's POV.
In this issue, we ask the question, "Are survey courses still
viable for introductory biology?" The POV question is related to the
ones asked by the National Research Council in the recent feature by Jay Labov
(www.cellbioed.org/articles/vol3no4/article.cfm?articleID=132)
and continues to be a subject of debate by many science departments, not just
biology. Often the discussion is split not only by perceived value of the
survey course, but also by the size of the institution. Therefore, we present
four POVs, plus a framing POV to set the tone. The overview was written by
Arri Eisen, who is a senior lecturer in Emory University's Biology Department
and the director of the Program in Science & Society. Representing the
Anti-Survey, Large University is Janet M. Batzli, Associate Director of the
nontraditional Biology Core Curriculum at the University of Wisconsin at
Madison. The Anti-Survey, Small College perspective is presented by David
Becker, who is an Associate Professor and Magdalena R. and John P. Dexter
Professor of Botany in the Department of Biology at Pomona College. Presenting
the Pro-Survey, Large University perspective is Douglas M. Fambrough,
Professor of Biology at The Johns Hopkins Department of Biology and Scientific
Director of the Searle Scholars Program. Finally, the Pro-Survey, Small
College POV was coauthored by Mary Lee Ledbetter and A. Malcolm Campbell.
Ledbetter is a Professor of Biology at College of the Holy Cross and a 2003
NSF Director's Award recipient. Campbell is an Associate Professor of Biology
at Davidson College and a co-Editor-in-Chief of CBE. Readers are encouraged to
compare the authors' perspectives and share their thoughts and reactions using
the online discussion forum hosted by CBE at
http://www.cellbioed.org/discussion/public/main.cfm.
What makes a good teacher? What makes a good curriculum? While these
two questions are intimately related, they are different. And when I think
about them, I find myself feeling like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof
dealing with a perplexing problem—that is, I quickly run out of hands.
On the one hand, when I reflect on my best teachers, I can't separate the
person from what the person taught me. On the other hand, when designing a
curriculum, we want to figure out what to teach and how, and leave out the
person, because 1) personnel changes, 2) teachers have different styles, and
3) a good curriculum allows for these different styles. On the other hand,
while personal style overlaps with pedagogy— the "how" of
teaching—they are different. On the other hand... I have run out of
hands.
Let's simplify a little and just discuss key questions and issues that
should be addressed in designing a rigorous biology curriculum. Since
introductory courses set the tone, standards, and expectations for the
curriculum, we'll focus our discussion on introductory courses as a model for
thinking about the entire curriculum. Because this is an
"overview" for a series of Points of View articles (POVs), I can
cheat some and not give you any answers (see the four POVs that follow for
some possible answers). Instead, I'll sneak into a discussion of these key
questions and issues, which I'll call The Big 5. These five key points are
important to consider, especially because we tend to lose sight of them since
we're often too close to our own blackboards to have a broader perspective.
Some of my comments may sound like common sense, but keep in mind that most
everything those bestseller self-help books say is common sense, yet they're
still bestsellers.
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1) GOALS
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What are the overarching goals of your curriculum? Teaching students how to
think? Imparting fundamental information? Covering "need-to-know"
information for an internal or preprofessional test? Offering a curriculum
that looks similar to, or different from, other institutions'? Teaching as
little as possible so you have more time to do research? Making classes
smaller or bigger?
At Emory University, where I teach, and probably at many other
research/teaching universities, the answer to all these questions, however
seemingly contradictory, is "yes." Thus, we have to prioritize,
sweat, compromise, and wrangle—all crucial elements to any successful
curricular renovation.
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2) DATA
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We are scientists; we base our professional lives on data. Why not our
classroom life? There is a large, improving, and growing literature on
learning, thinking, and teaching from neuroscientists, educators,
psychologists, and others. Many journals are devoted to these topics, and many
professional scientific journals have teaching articles and supplements.
Explore them.
Some examples of lessons found in educational literature: 1) Different
people learn differently. 2) Experts in different fields have common ways of
accessing and synthesizing information to solve problems. 3) A key element of
learning is the ability to transfer knowledge from one context to a new and
previously unknown context. We can (should?) research our own curricula and
how we design them. Again, there is significant expertise and literature on
assessment and educational research.
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3) CONTEXT, CONTEXT, CONTEXT
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The literature from many disciplines agrees that we all learn things
better, our brains grasp them better, when they are presented/explored in a
rich context and connected to previous learning and experience. Metabolism can
be boring; metabolism in the context of an Olympic sprinter or maple syrup
urine disease is interesting and motivating. Including experimental history
and context is vital, also. As a straight- "A," "highly and
impressively trained" product of American science education, I was
shocked to find myself clueless in my first year of a Ph.D. program in
biochemistry. I had heard and regurgitated quite well; I had performed my lab
exercises and gotten the right answers. But context was missing. I had learned
very little.
An unfortunate, but well-established, notion with somewhat scary
implications is that science taught in societal and interdisciplinary context
is a great idea for nonmajors' courses. True, but who should better
understand cardiac health in terms of the rest of the body, diet, culture, and
society than a physician or bench scientist?
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4) LABS
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The lab is where science happens. All we can do in lecture is get students
excited, interested, thinking, and enthusiastic, but it's in the lab where
scientists are made (or not). My old friend Warren from high school biology
was a "C" student in an average high school, but in the lab he was
a whiz kid, with incredible hands and knack for experimentation. Now Warren is
a successful geneticist.
Integrating lab and lecture conceptually, with coordinated exercises and
communicative instructors, is important. It seems sinful that students have to
suffer through teaching labs where results are known in advance, students
don't become familiar with one or two model systems, and they do not learn how
or why experiments were designed. The consequence of these dreadful labs will
be students like me lost in graduate programs, or worse, perhaps good students
who never go into science in the first place.
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5) STUDENTS
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Who are your students? What are their science backgrounds? Where are they
headed after graduation? Where would you like them to go? I put students as
the last of The Big 5 because, while students are important and they shape our
teaching context, I'm not sure the first four key issues are altered
by the fifth. That is, your answers to the questions in the first Big 4 key
issues might be, or maybe should be, the same regardless of your students.
At Emory, half of our introductory biology students have taken advanced
placement biology, and half haven't had biology since the seventh or ninth
grade. This is a challenge, but it has not kept us from currently designing a
rigorous introductory series that attempts to "bring everyone up to the
same level."
A careful exploration of The Big 5 and a long wrestling match with your
colleagues should begin the focusing process toward a new curriculum, and the
following POVs will help you even more in considering questions such as:
should we adopt a traditional survey course approach or focus on covering
advanced topics in significant depth? A careful reading of the POVs suggests
superb models; great creativity; and a surprising amount of shared goals,
structures, and pedagogies among very different institutions and departments
irrespective of how a particular approach is labeled.
Even after running out of hands, Tevye usually made good and challenging
decisions. If you were to ask him, I bet he'd say the process of reaching
those decisions was nearly as important and educational as the decisions
themselves.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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I thank Rachelle Spell for useful discussions and Victoria Finnerty for a
careful reading.
TOP
1) GOALS
2) DATA