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!").