Beckman, Ferru, Beckmann (2013), Softly, softly Introducing research-led education into a successful first year course

Short summary of the scope and focus in the article Quote a statement that summarizes what the author claims they contribute to the field. In your own words, compare the results/arguments presented in the article with the authors’ claim(s) you identified in question

Compared with postgraduate and later year undergraduate science courses, in the case of the first-year courses it seems more challenging to implement research-led education (RLE) activities. Indeed, such courses offer usually basic knowledge that students must acquire in the first year to have a good preparation for the continuation of their studies and tend to be well established; moreover, these courses feature enrollments from several students with different background, which could result in less flexibility to accommodate changes; in some cases, the course consists of different topics taught by many lecturer/researchers and is already successful in its form, therefore it becomes more difficult to change something that is already successful. This can be expressed from the motto “If it isn’t broken, why fix it?”.

The article provides responses to the question ‘It isn’t broken, but can it be more research- led?’. The authors focus on a softly softly approach to bring change in a first-year semester- long course (human biology) by incorporating research-led education (RLE) into first year teaching.

The course in human biology consists of four independently taught modules and standard assessment tasks. Despite the effective teaching and satisfaction of the students, from informal talks it is suggested that students focused on learning the content needed to pass each component without appreciating the bigger picture of the course (the link between the different concepts learned in each topic area). This translates in lack of effective scaffolding towards threshold concepts. According to the engagement of the authors with the literature, the introduction of new activities should involve Inquiry-based Learning (IBL), lead towards an understanding of the threshold concepts pertinent to first year biology and include high levels of scaffolding between activities.

The soft approach consisted in making:

-minor changes to some activities and their corresponding assessments by introducing more scaffolding and cross-referencing to the material of the course and IBL activities that incorporate hypothesis development, basic literature research, evaluations of methods, statistical analyses, and presentation of results.

-major changes to the delivery and assessment of another activity by replacing a class with take-home short-answer assignment with a mini-conference and with the introduction of IBL

activities in the form of a group desk-based research project and presentation. This is intended as collaborative activity built on the skills acquired in the previous classes.

The authors planned to shift, in terms of the Healy matrix, from a focus on Healy’s ‘research- led and research-tutored’ quadrants to the ‘research-orientated and research-based’ quadrants. Introducing well-scaffolded links among the course topics helps the students to become more engaged with the course as a whole and gain a better understanding of the relevant threshold concept. The major change represents the essence of a research-based approach.

The risk for educators to introduce change in something well established might be that students with word-of-mouth expectations of teaching may be concerned by changes, and any problems may result as major failings in course feedback.

Coming back to the question “It isn’t broken, but can it be more research-led?”, based on the results presented by the authors it could be said that introducing small changes in something which is well established seems to not affect overall the previous evaluation of the course. From the usual university-standardized course evaluation, it was observed that almost all variables remained essentially similar to the ones from the course evaluations of the previous years. The authors believe that the only statistical improvement in the variable “The feedback I received during the course supported my learning” could be attributed to the change in teaching style rather than some shift in the cohort’s response. The hypothesis of the authors is that introducing IBL activities promoted more peer and demonstrator engagement and feedback, a richer peer relationship was created and provided students with effective feedback on their learning.

Is the argument that the authors provide solid enough based on the evidence and/or theoretical considerations to convince you of their claim(s)? What is missing in the article?

As far as I understood, the hypothesis from the authors would need data for solid evidence. The author’s informal feedback from students, and the level of the student’s engagement in all activity sessions, suggested high levels of satisfaction. To support this with more evidence, it could be useful for the future to add a formal feedback change-focused evaluation from the students to have an evidence of their level of the satisfaction and to track in time the evolution of the level of satisfaction based on the innovative components introduced in the course.

What was most interesting for you? How does this article relate to your own teaching? What can you learn from it?

I imagine the situation where I teach a first-year course. What I think is important in the design of such courses is to keep in mind that it can be very useful to introduce a high level of scaffolding between the course topics. Coming back to the question “it isn’t broken, but can it be more research-led?”, I think it is important that the basic knowledge needs to be intact and at the same time it is beneficial to introduce soft changes (such as innovative research- led education and inquire-learning based activities) to the course.