Lydia Daniels, Biological Sciences, replaced lectures with technology-based assignments and learner-centered activities in her ACIE project, Losing the Lecture: Student-Centered, Inquiry-Based Learning in Entry-Level Biology Course.  Daniels was motivated to redesign her course by current research on teaching and learning that promotes active learning as most effective for student comprehension and retention, especially in large undergraduate lecture halls.  “I decided everything that I’m reading in the literature says that active learning—putting the responsibility on the students for their own learning–produces better learning results,” she said.

Each term, Daniels and her colleagues in Biological Sciences lecture to large groups of students—approximately 250 students per class—and they consistently observe the same rate of failure, defined as “earning a C- or lower in this course.”  Daniels created an enormous flowchart to illustrate what she hoped to accomplish, which included eliminating traditional lectures.   When she shared her plans with her colleagues, however, they were “really nervous about this idea of not doing any lecturing.”  Cognizant of these concerns, Daniels revised her plans to incorporate a small amount of lecturing to review key terms and concepts, so that everyone, including both faculty and students, would be on board.

In the executive summary of her grant proposal, Daniels clearly illustrates her three goals:

1. To change the emphasis in the classroom from one of content delivery to one focused on developing the essential skills of scientific literacy.
2. To develop students’ skills in applying one’s knowledge to solve problems, with class time devoted to a variety of interactive and collaborative activities.
3. To provide students regular practice in using scientific literacy skills.

In order to accomplish these goals, she incorporated engaging visual materials like videos and other media into her CourseWeb site to replace PowerPoint-driven lectures.  Students were expected to complete pre-class assignments before each class, and weekly quizzes ensured that students were keeping up and reviewing the materials.   Daniels provided the students with instructions for writing summaries of scientific articles and then asked them to use their summarizing skills to create a final essay on synthetic biology.  Although they had not seen the topic in class, it required them to integrate concepts they had learned in other contexts. She tried to cover all of the skills that graduating students should be able to demonstrate:  As Daniels explained, they should be able to “read scientific information and be able to interpret it for themselves.  They should be able to read something in the popular literature about the new diet craze…and be able to assess how reasonable is the evidence in these articles and decide ‘Should I believe this or not?’  They should have a deep understanding of some very key biological concepts.  They should understand Cell Theory.  They should understand basic genetics.  They should have some sense of how organisms interact with their environments.”

Students seemed to have mixed feelings about the redesigned course.  “If they liked it, they loved it.  If they didn’t like it, they absolutely hated it.”  During the first class meeting, Daniels was careful to explain to students what the course would look like, what kind of participation she expected of them, and how they would be graded.  Although she received positive feedback from her students, she was mostly intrigued by the particular character of the complaints, which some students raised.  Rather than referring to the nature of the course, she said, most negative comments focused upon lack of timeliness in the posting of materials to CourseWeb.  Students disliked not being able to get the materials whenever they wanted them.

Through conversations with her colleagues in Biology and analysis of student feedback, Daniels plans to revise the course even further based upon lessons learned.  So how will she reshape the course to meet the needs of her students?  Daniels smiled, saying, “I’m still trying to sort that out.”  She views the course as a long-term, (roughly five-year), work in progress, during which the course will undergo several more transformations before reaching its final form.  As she continues to revise, teach, and collect data, she keeps her goal of increased student responsibility for learning—especially for students who might otherwise devote minimal time and energy to their own education—in clear view.  “I really want to try to convince [students] that I don’t give grades, I just assign them based upon the criteria established at the beginning of the term.  I want to help my students learn biology so they can become scientifically literate members of the electorate.  They also need to learn that they are the primary drivers of their education; that their success, however they define it, is their responsibility because learners learn what they choose to learn.”