Bob Turner, Western Oregon State College
Bob has eliminated lectures from his general biology course. Instead, students use lecture time to work in groups on a series of activities. This is in addition to the investigations they work on in labs. The activities pose a series of questions to which students must apply what they have learned from their text and in lab. Bob is designing these activities so that they start by helping students clarify what they already know, from their earlier studies or their own experience, then build from there toward more unfamiliar or abstract concepts. Students also keep journals in which they reflect on their learning in each activity. The material in the course is also organized in a unique way, based on the questions that drive the activities, rather than on a traditional sequence of content presentation, so that each activity allows students to answer some questions, but then raises others. Because of the intensely collaborative and self-paced nature of the course, Bob is also developing some methods of helping students learn to work together and to take responsibility for their own learning. So far, his assessment of this approach seems to indicate that students are learning as much as, or more than, students in more traditional courses, but he believes that he will be able to improve this as he gets better at teaching this way!