Trick or Treatment

I've selected another book for my BIO 101 course for Fall 2010. I started reading Trick or Treatment by Simon Singh and quickly realized that the book is exactly what I was looking for as a way to introduce the process of science and evidenced-based medicine. I now have to decide in what order I will be using the book. I think it would work either as the lead-off or the third book.

Start with a Story

Last month I attended a great workshop on teaching science using case studies. The organizers gave us each a book on the subject called Start with a Story. Published by NSTA, the book was edited by the facilitator of the workshop in Buffalo, Kipp Herreid. I have slowly been making my way through it, furiously adding marginalia and thinking how I could use some of the ideas for my classes.

I have been particularly interested in team-based learning. The class is organized into permanent, heterogenous groups consisting of 6-8 students. At the beginning of most class periods, the students first take a short 15-20 multiple-choice/true-false test on their assigned readings. Then they take a group test. Frank Dinan, organic chem professor, who converted me to the method then gives his students a set of problems to work out, what he calls a "chem do". During the problem-solving portion of his class, he moves from group to group answering questions. The chem do part helps his students prep for the big exams. Frank also has his students do case studies during their recitation period.

The other day during my reading I came across an interesting caveat. If the readings are dense (e.g. textbook), you need to provide a study guide to help the students focus on the important parts. In fact, Kipp shared that he will designate sections of his readings as: Must know, Good to know, and Nice to know. This was helpful since I am starting 101 with Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything which has quite a lot of facts per chapter.

The other interesting tidbit I picked up on yesterday was actually a unique way to assess student understanding of case studies. Writing dialogues. After analyzing a case, students have to write a dialogue (involving 2 or more characters) discussing the subject. They have to write at least 20 exchanges for each character and the statements need to be serious (no ad hominem attacks..."oh yeah?" "Yeah!").

Textbook Toss

I teach two introductory non-major courses: Bio 101 and PHS 111. The physical science course covers astronomy, geology, and weather. I have never been pleased with the textbooks for either course. They are well-written and all but my students rarely read them. Plus they are getting pricier every year. A few months ago I had the idea of modeling my class like a literature course and use popular science books as the required texts. There are some excellent books out there that are engaging, informative and cheaper than a traditional textbook. In treating each course like a lit class, I envisioned the following: class discussion rather than lecture, small group work, and problem-based team learning.

Just to see how a literature class is taught, I asked a colleague of mine to let me sit in on his two lit classes he is teaching this summer. I was a little disappointed that it turned out more like a lecture than a discussion. We had a frank talk afterwards and tomorrow I am returning to observe his class again. He said he was going to try again.

So far I have chosen two books for my BIO 101 course: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson and The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. Although Bryson's book covers all the sciences, the last 200 pages are devoted to biology. Published in 2003, some of the information is out of date but that makes a perfect entry into a problem-based learning opportunity. Of course, it is hard to do better than Dawkins in explaining evolution so picking his latest book was easy. I am looking for two more to round out the semester. There are some very good candidates. When starting my search I began by perusing the Listmania lists on Amazon but came up with any that were helpful. I then found that the Royal Society, since 2000, has been awarding a best popular science book prize each year. Jackpot! In my next post I will reveal my candidates.