Points of View: A Survey of Survey Courses: Are They Effective?

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.

1) GOALS

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.

2) DATA

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.

3) CONTEXT, CONTEXT, CONTEXT

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?

4) LABS

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.

5) STUDENTS

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.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS