Critical Thinking

A question on my BIO156/181 Unit 5 exam addresses Mendelian genetics and the inheritance of a trait from parents. The trait in question is inherited in a simple Mendelian manner (one gene with two alleles, one allele being dominant and the other allele being recessive.)   Originally the question was about hitchhiker's thumb and involved a kind of "double negative" statement, where "lack of the thumb" was dominant.  I think this wording was making it hard for students to think through the problem.

Science faculty are constantly hearing from their students, "This isn't math! I didn't learn this in my math class". Many students are not able to transfer what they learned in math into their science courses.  Most of the concepts in MAT091 are crucial to success in science.  Throughout the semester, I met with 6 science faculty to discuss HOW students see these topics in science classes.

The general public has numerous misconceptions about science. My PHY101 students explored this intersection of science with society by researching a topic, performing a survey, and creating an educational website. The students chose a topic from a list to research. After researching the student came up with a question to test the misconception and three follow up questions to challenge it. The students presented their results in a non-traditional format, an informative website. This educational website was evaluated based on the attached assessment sheet.

In the last 5 years the chemistry program has made a switch to a fully active learning pedagogy. While we are finding this to be a huge success for the students, it is causing some problems for our instructors. Since this is a novel approach for teaching chemistry classes, most content qualified instructors are not familiar with how to present curriculum in this way.

In teaching Muscle function, I have always used an activity where I physically demonstrate the actions to students. Students then stand and work in pairs, mimic the movements on their own body, and evaluate their partner's motions. I circulate and correct with each new motion. When doing the activity as a class, and only their partner is working with them, students think this activity is fun and interesting. The class is excited and loud.

A new supplement for the microbiology text called Mastering Microbiology was recently released by the publisher. I had heard positive things about the Mastering Biology for BIO 181 (pre-req for micro) and decided to implement Mastering Micro in a like manner. For two semesters prior to utilizing Mastering, the average grade overall at the end of the semesters  was 74.64% (n=73).Not a bad average but many students indicated they wanted practice and micro is very conceptual. I was not sure exactly what I wanted to see with my students other than overall increase in performance.

Many people do learning communities (see MAT and CPD LC's) to try improve retention in classes.  However, the LC between PHY 121 and MAT 221 has been about trying to improve student understanding of the concepts of physics and calculus and how they fit together.  Retention and success in these coures have been fine which is reason for focus on understanding rather than retention.  From the attached file it can be seen that on the Force Concept Inventory the LC students did better than traditional class even though they had less math preparation for the course.

It was noted that one thing many scientists (and others) have in common is a love of puzzles.  They require critical thinking skills and many require a scientific inquiry type approach to solve.  We decided to see if encouraging our students to attempt a number of puzzles throughout the semester, for extra credit, would enhance their critical thinking skills or at least encourage them to start attempting more puzzles which may be have beneficial in the long run.

Since Fall 2003, a textbook was used in MAT220 (caculus I).  For the last 4 years, handouts were created to supplement the textbook.  This semester, students use only a workbook that I created.  The purpose of this assessment is to document my observations in the level of engagement of students from using textbook only, slowly incorporating worksheets, to full implementation of a workbook.   Most math textbooks are not designed to engage students, thus it was difficult to do so.

In order to get students more personally involved in the learning process, students are given the responsibility of choosing four debate topics that are then used to formulate the questions used in the formal debates in the course.

Through a combination of guided discussion and voting students decide as a group what they will research and debate.

The students apply knowledge obtained in lecture concerning genotype, mutations, and phenotype to an article about a mutant strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa - a frequent cause of pneumonia in cystic fibrosis patients. Traditionally they struggle with two questions in particular. For Sp 09 the average on the hw was 60%.

The CHM 130 class is designed for students to learn through group work and discovery based activities.  One of the drawbacks from this method is students ability to grasp concepts at the same pace as their peers.  Many times students leave the class unsure of the core concept addressed in the class period.  Videotaping lectures lends itself to student apathy during class.  The solution I am persuing this semester is videotaping quick 3-5 min snapshots of core concepts and posting them on blackboard for all 9 section of the class.  I am using student whiteboards as m

Our goal was to raise the grade of muscle lab practicals. A muscle practical requires recognizing/naming 60 muscles, and stating  the action of those muscles. I hypothesized it should be easier for students to learn three rules and 8 joint movements, and reason out the muscle actions,  than it would be to memorize 60 names.  Students recieved a list of the name, origin, insertion, action of 60 muscles  a website showing muscle clay images,  flashcards,  and animations.

Unit Two of BIO181/BIO156 comprises Protein structure/function, Enzymes, Membranes/Osmosis and basic Cell structure.   I initially taught cell structure in a straight lecture format, but switched to a jigsaw method in 2010, and most recently to an "enhanced" jigsaw method (2012)

Does the student understand the FITT Principle?

          Information Literacy:  Use current FITT Principle Pre & Post Test.  Consider updating the test.

Can the student apply the FITT Principle to improving / maintaining their fitness level.

          Re-design the DYO WOW assignments ???

Has the student made changes to their exercise program to ensure improvement / maintenance in their fitness level.