Over 20 people came to the University of East London to attend the second
in a series of events in association with our Special
Interest Group: Practical Work in the Biosciences. The day was a mix
of activities, presentations and opportunities for discussion, all with
the aim of promoting better practicals. After a welcome and introduction
to LTSN Bioscience by Steve Maw, there were the following sessions:
Better practicals Prof Ed Wood
Teaching Scientific Method and Experimental Design Prof Ian Hughes
Assessing practical skills Dr Peter Klappa
Group Activity - Practical Challenges Scenarios All
'How I did it' sessions
Cross-curricular practicals Dr Vicki Tariq
Prof Ed Wood, Director, LTSN Bioscience, University of Leeds
Ed introduced the theme for the day. He outlined the purposes of practical
work, some of the skills taught through practical work and ideas on how
we might achieve these.
View
Ed's 'Better Practicals' Slides
Prof Ian Hughes, Co- Director LTSN Bioscience University of Leeds
Ian described one possible approach to teaching Scientific Method and
Experimental Design. Critical features of good experimental design can
be identified, some of which are generic and some of which are discipline
specific. These can be explicitly taught and practiced and are essential
for students who intend to pursue experimental or non-experimental careers
in bioscience.
View
Ian's 'Teaching Scientific Method and Experimental Design' Slides
Dr Peter Klappa, University of Kent at Canterbury
Peter described how he
had redesigned practical classes to assess the practical skills and manual
competency of Bioscience students. Students do three practicals, knowing
that one of them will be repeated and assessed later on in the module.
The assessment is based on adherence to safety issues and manual competency
i.e., closeness to the correct answer. These changes were made possible
by a grant from LTSN Bioscience's Teaching
Development Fund.
Delegates split into groups and were asked to discuss strategies to combat
one of three scenarios. These scenarios reflected common challenges to
good practical work, namely increased student numbers leading to increased
marking load, reduced practical time and finally increased students diversity.
Groups were also asked to list 2 advantages and 2 disadvantages to the
strategies they suggested.
View the Scenarios as: Word
file or pdf
View
strategies for scenario 1 (increased marking load)
View
strategies for scenario 2 (increased student diversity)
View
strategies for scenario 3 (reduced time allocation)
Three speakers gave short talks on how they had tackled similar challenges
to those outlined in the scenarios
Prof Ian Hughes, Co- Director LTSN Bioscience University of Leeds
Ian described how he had utilised peer-assessment of practical write-ups
to help reduce staff marking load. Not only was staff workload reduced
but results showed that peer assessment also lead to increased student
learning.
View
Ian's 'Response to increased marking load' Slides
Dr Maureen Dawson, Manchester Metropolitan University
Maureen described strategies she had used on a HND Applied Biological
Sciences course. The approach involved tutorial support, getting students
to write the report introduction before entering the lab and to write
the rest of the report in time allocated for the practical class.
View
Maureen's 'Response to diverse range of students' Slides
Dr Allan Jones, University of Dundee
Allan described a situation was faced with, namely a 50% reduction in
student contact time. Previously students had worked individually on an
organism to a pre-determined protocol with no required preparation. In
the new approach students worked in pairs as part of a larger team of
10. The pairs then have to study their organism and report their findings
back to the group.
View
Allan's 'Response to reduced practical time allocation' Slides
Dr Vicki Tariq, Queen’s University Belfast
Vicki described four practical, problem-based group projects designed
for classes of ~130 first-year undergraduates. Students assigned to a
group and to a particular project, were asked to research a practical
bioscience problem, design and conduct appropriate experiments within
time and budgetary constraints, and present their work in the form of
a scientific poster. The students’ work was assessed by tutors,
the students themselves (using a self- and peer-assessment procedure),
and industrial contacts; the latter also sponsored prizes for the best
group effort. This initiative was originally funded by the Enterprise
in Higher Education Initiative and won the British Industrial Partnership
Award Glaxo Prize in 1993.
View
Vicki's 'Cross-curricular practicals' Slides
Also of possible interest:
Practical work bibliography
