ChemIT: On-line Learning: The First Year Biology Way

Example of
Practice
Presentation

Chemistry IT Workshop 16 November 1998

On-line Learning: The First Year Biology Way

Mary Peat
School of Biological Sciences, The University of Sydney

This paper was previously presented at the School of Physics IT Workshop and published in the workshop proceedings, 45-47, June 1998.

The School of Biological Sciences teaches first year biology to 1200+ students each year from almost every faculty on main campus, resulting in a student group with a wide range of generic abilities and a varying background in biology. The teaching involves repeat lecture series, multiple concurrent laboratory sessions, and vast numbers of reports and examination papers to mark. In addition, the introduction of advanced junior courses has added a significant load to the first year staff.

Computers were initially introduced to the learning environment to help students understand topics which are difficult to conceptualise and are often difficult to demonstrate in the laboratory. The early offerings were stand-alone tutorials and revision packages - now well past their use-by-date with respect to design, layout and navigation but not with respect to content. Currently computer based materials are delivered in four, sixty-seater laboratories and in a student resources room (Franklin and Peat, 1995) and most of these materials were developed (or re-developed from older material) to run on a Macintosh intranet, and also be available from anywhere on campus, but only on a Macintosh. At this stage the resources room had been in operation for over 20 years and in addition to computer based materials it contained biological models, microscopes, reading materials and other resources. With an increasing use of computers in the laboratory and more materials becoming available for review and revision in the "actual" resources room, the pressure from students to open the room for much longer hours (which we cannot afford), forced us to consider alternative ways of increasing their access to the materials.

The web has allowed the development of a "virtual" resources room which offers students a flexibility of use that the real resources room could never offer. Students can access materials 24 hours a day 365 days a year - that is 168 hours a week, and use these materials at a time convenient to them, with the materials available for them to go back to time after time if required. In the current economic climate, with students juggling university commitments with employment (48% of students are in casual employment between 5 and 40 hours per week, (Peat and Franklin, 1998)), the development of a virtual site for the students is timely. Our Virtual Resources Room (VRR) is a web site which contains course materials and packages which allow both exploratory learning and self-assessment opportunities. In addition it gives students an opportunity to contact staff electronically. The VRR can be accessed via the First Year Biology web address logging in with a User ID and Password. (http://fybio.bio.usyd.edu.au/SOBSFYB/FYB_welcome.html).

The Virtual Resources Room offers students a non-confrontational, friendly environment with the added benefit of a variety of learning opportunities which suit most student preferences, but putting the onus on them to take responsibility for their own learning. All information on the site is searchable, for example a student can search for a particular topic within a lecture or set of lectures.

Materials available in the Virtual Resources Room are:

Current timetables for all first year courses.

"Paper-based materials" such as answers to homework and self-test quiz questions, copies of the sample exam papers for the various courses and materials required for assignments.

Lecture notes (posted on the web after the lecture has been given). Email addresses of lecturers are included so the students can contact them directly if they wish.

Computer based learning material such as tutorials, pre-lab modules and revision modules (Franklin and Peat 1995; Franklin, Peat, Mackay-Wood and Chambers, 1996).

Student Self-Assessment Modules (known as SAMs) which enable students to take a series of formative tests and exercises aimed at helping them monitor their level of understanding of major biological concepts (Peat, Franklin and Mackay-Wood, 1997).

Interactive, web-based materials which allow students to mark, and receive feedback on a "mock" exam which is held two thirds of the way through Semester 1.

Remedial materials, aimed at enhancing understanding of major topic areas, for students identified to be "at risk" by the "mock" exam.

Communication
The asynchronous communication link between students and staff (via email) and between students and students (discussion list) are important innovations in the Virtual Resources Room. Students can email staff via CyberTutor and ask questions about the course content and organisation. Staff check the CyberTutor email inbox and reply to any questions or send them on to a more appropriate authority. The staff remain anonymous, allowing for the involvement of several staff during the course of the semester. A discussion group allows students to post questions, or discuss topics with their peers. Students can either join a topic currently under discussion or start a new topic.

Student comments on the VRR include:

"Biology web site extremely useful and well organised"

"Overall this message is mainly to compliment the staff on an excellent set of resources and to encourage you to continue developing them"

"In response to the idea for putting the CAL modules on-line, I think it's a wonderful idea. I can't express how great I think it is..."

Student enquiries by email in 1997:

35.5% were questions relating to the general content of the courses, usually on laboratory material, or concerning assignments related to laboratory experiments.

39% were questions relating to the lecture material. The majority of these messages concerned the actual lecture content, and 20% of these messages contained positive comments about the lecture material on the site.

14% were concerning the exams.

12% were Internet-related questions, such as how to reference a web site in an assignment; server problems; and when would material appear on our site.

Conclusion

The Virtual Resources Room was launched in response to increasing student demands for greater access to the real Resources Room. Moving material onto the web addresses equity of access and this has been enhanced by the opening of the student computer access laboratories (one with the potential for 24-hour access) across the University campus. However, providing web-based materials for students is time consuming and care needs to be taken in designing user-friendly sites and in choosing useful learning materials for these sites.

References

Franklin, S. and Peat, M. "The Use of Multimedia in the Teaching of First Year Biology: Learning with Technology" Proceedings of ASCILITE Conference 1995, Melbourne.

Franklin, S., Peat, M., Mackay-Wood, R. and Chambers, D. (1996) "CAL modules in First Year Biology at the University of Sydney" CUBE'96 International conference (Computers in University Biology Education Internet Conference) http://fybio.bio.usyd.edu.au/sobsfyb/fyb/tdg/cube96/franklin.html (Australian mirror site).

Franklin, S., Peat, M. and Mackay-Wood, R. (1997) "Assessment using computers: the First Year Biology way" Proceedings of UniServe Science Computer Assessment Workshop, The University of Sydney, NSW.

Peat, M., Franklin, S. and Mackay-Wood, R. (1997) "The Development of Self-Assessment Modules: use of tailor-made templates" Virtual CUBE'97 International Conference (Computers in University Biology Education Internet Conference) http://www.liv.ac.uk/ctibiol/vCUBE97/home.html

Peat, M. and Franklin, S. Report to the School of Biological Sciences Teaching Committee: 1998 Survey of casual hours of work of first year students, June 1998.

Acknowledgment

The author would like to acknowledge the "team" of Sue Franklin, Rob Mackay-Wood and more recently Alison Lewis and Aida Yalcin for their continued enthusiasm; and the Faculty of Science for teaching development support in the form of grants and the Dean, Professor Robert G Hewitt, for the encouragement to continue.

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