Beckman, J., Ferru, I., & Beckmann, E. A. (2013, Beckman). Softly, softly: Introducing research-led education into a successful first year course

The article demonstrated implementation of a research-intensive education approach that is applied on a first-year course in Human Biology. Moreover, the article has special emphasizes in various educational conventions such as threshold and inquiry-based learning concepts in step- by-step manner.

Beckman et al. (2013) described the scope of the article as follows: “This paper presents an interim report of an action learning project, supported by the Science and Mathematics network of Australian university educators (SaMnet), to review a first-year biology semester-long course and introduce new research-led components that address threshold concepts in the discipline. Our approach involved necessitated a ‘softly, softly’ approach to bringing about change. In the first iteration of the reviewed course, subtle changes were made to introductory and practical activities, and a major change introduced in the last module, involving a sequence of small-group inquiry-based learning activities leading to a mini-conference on parasitology.”

The proposed “Softly, softly” approach by the authors that have various incremental stages such as:

1) Minimal changes were proceeded to the introduction and hands-on activities sections

2) Contrary, a major change is applied on the last module by integrating inquiry-based learning approaches. Forming small-groups and creating more interactive and research-

led learning components which even yielded a mini-conference on parasitology.

Beckman et al. (2013) aimed to shift the course trajectory from “research-led and research- tutored” to “research-orientated and research-based” in terms of the Healy’s matrix.

Segmentation of the course activities in to multiple pieces such as Activity A (Discussions on ethics in human biology), Activity B (Glycemic Index), Activity C ( a video-informed discussion of human sexuality) , Activity D (Practical session: measurements of students’ heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature to assess muscle/nerve interactions) and Activity E (a video- informed discussion of the impact of infectious diseases on humans), respectively was implemented well by applying softly-softly approach. Activities A to D was changed very less in comparison to Activity E in terms of applying in inquiry-based-learning (IBL). According to the results shown in Table 2 and Table 3, it is observed that there are improvements in terms of students’ cognitive abilities by applying IBL and similar approaches.

The article has successfully presented the proposed educational approaches in a clear and understandable manner with various aspects. However, authors may consider to apply more activities distributed on other Activities between A to D and observe if it will deliver better results or not. It was interesting to observe the impacts of IBL and similar pedagogical concepts to push the boundaries of the first-year courses from more “emphasis on research content” to

“emphasis on research process and problems” territory on the Healy Matrix. Another interesting point which is missing in this article or in general in similar articles, questioning if the existing Teaching – Research (TR) Nexus convention sufficiently covers the Innovation and involving Innovation component to the Education domain related topics. Last but not least, the English

I do have a similar planned course named “Renewable Energy Informatics” in August 2021 for the first-year students where I am planning to integrate my 20 years research and industrial experience in the field of renewable energies and energy informatics using similar methods. I learned a couple practical and theoretical approaches from the course and this particular article.