Call it the “missing link” problem.
Like many other educators, Dr. Yi Lu has faced this challenge of academia; unlike many of his colleagues, however, Lu, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) professor and a 1997 Cottrell Scholar, has made a big effort to face the challenge.
Lu, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has taught general chemistry off and on for the past 13 years. He’s intimately familiar with the missing link:
“There are always a substantial number of undergraduate students each year who, although full of curiosity, have no idea how to make connections between what they want to know and what is being taught in the class,” he said.
Most science instruction in universities and colleges is sequential, beginning with introductory courses such as general chemistry and biology and proceeding through increasingly advanced courses. Under the traditional model, the starting point is the course materials instead of student interests, thus students may not see why a particular concept or reaction is important, or how that knowledge is related to their interests, until much later in their academic careers. As a result, whether they’re taking the class only because their parents insist upon it, or because they need the credit before moving on to careers in medicine, the minds of these students often are all but closed to the wonders of science.
“Basically they’re just there because they want to get an ‘A’ and get on with their lives,” Lu observed. He spoke at the Summer 2007 Cottrell Scholars Conference held in Tucson. These poorly motivated students frequently fall through the holes in what Lu calls the “leaky pipeline.”
“Typically, I ask incoming freshmen how many of them want to go to medical school,” he said. “Generally, more than half of them raise their hands. But after that first midterm, the number of hands that go up is considerably less. People begin to drop out. After the second exam, there are even fewer of these people in class.”
It’s a shame, really – these are often bright students whose understanding of science would greatly enrich their lives if only professors approached them more like, well…car dealers.
“When you go to a car dealership,” Lu explained, “they don’t tell you, first thing, how great their car is, or how this part does this or that. The first thing they do is ask you what you want – what model do you need. And from there they go on to match what you need with what they offer.”
That’s precisely what Lu decided to do, creating a new four-year science course called Chemistry and Biology of Everyday Life to strengthen this missing link between students’ interests and current science curricula. It’s open to all undergraduates -- freshman to seniors -- with a theme involving the role of chemistry in life and society. It is intended to stimulate student interest in science early and promote long-term, curiosity-driven, inquiry-based education.
So far more than 100 students have taken the course – which Lu describes as “more of a pilot program” -- with 30 or 40 entering each year.
“The course mimics a scientific research group, in which students develop research skills through community building and research activities,” he said.
Those activities include a science literature club, discussions on special topics, research assignments, as well as peer mentoring. Also, in the process of seeing what works as Lu has developed the course over the past four years, he’s found an old-fashioned tool he deems highly effective in gaining student commitment to the program – the field trip.
“Trips to visit laboratories and attend scientific meetings expose students to the excitement of scientific discoveries,” Lu said. “Having freshmen go to conferences to see how their professors, teaching assistants, and even senior members of their class give presentations is an eye-opening experience. When students come back from these events, you can see they’ve become motivated.”
What happens on such trips, he notes, is the magic of community building. “There are cost issues, so we take a big van because we can’t afford airfare – once we drove all the way to New Orleans. And when four people have to share a room, they get to know each other, they really start talking to one another, and they’re much more likely to participate in discussions when we get back to class.”
Because the course is based on what the students say they’re interested in, each year the core curriculum changes, making it difficult to use a single textbook, Lu said. “Sometimes we have to improvise and go to different sources, using Xeroxes or reserving books.”
Some of the more popular topics each year have included household chemicals and toxicology, pharmaceutical design, and how biology and chemistry relate to fitness and health.
In the process of researching such topics, students learn how to evaluate information from online sources like Google – “the highest-accessed sites are often the worst,” Lu observes -- as well has how to write like a scientist.
“One of the most popular lectures every year has been how to find a research group and carry out productive undergraduate research,” Lu said, adding that one of the problems students at a big university face is too few slots in the research labs for too many undergrads. “So it’s a bonus for my students to learn how to contact a professor, how to present themselves, and more importantly, how to be successful and productive once they get into a lab.”
As part of the course, journal clubs meet three times a semester. The clubs are composed of individuals who share a common interest, and they discuss the contents of various publications in a particular field. Students who’ve been in the course for several years are expected to mentor the new students during topical discussions. (Mentors have their own meetings for special training at the beginning of the semester and, subsequently, are responsible for sub-group meetings with their mentees every Friday).
Students also hold debates on specific topics based on the current events. When the anthrax threat was in the news, students were asked to tackle the issue of what a proper U.S. response would be -- a topic, Lu says, that was difficult for undergraduates to discuss unless they had acquired the proper knowledge.
In addition to debates, students are also expected to make presentations.
“We divide students into teams and we ask each team to investigate a special subtopic related to a theme – say, virulence, vaccination, pathology, biology of Bacillus anthracis -- and students give presentations of each of these subtopics,” Lu said. “The bottom line is they all learn something from the process and they’re passionate about it.”
He said students seem to love speaking out and participate in class, rather than merely sitting and taking notes.
One of the most popular activities is what Lu calls “game-style” quizzes akin to TV’s “Jeopardy.” He notes that traditional closed-book quizzes don’t provide feedback fast enough, and when students finally receive their results, most focus more on what score they got, rather than on what they did wrong. “Game-type quizzes are not only fun, but also provide instant feedbacks on what’s right and wrong,” he said. “By listening to how others answer the questions, even in the wrong way, students often learn something.”
There are also assignments throughout the semester. Lu said Assignment No. 1 requires beginning students to select five everyday activities – “the chemistry behind kissing, or the biology behind washing your hair,” for example -- and then to write one-page essays on each. Assignment No. 2 requires a longer essay – 10 pages for freshmen and sophomores, or a thesis proposal for juniors and seniors.
Lu noted the course can be tailored to go slower or faster, depending upon the needs of individual students.
“We’re not replacing the existing courses,” Lu said of his new – and still experimental -- approach to science instruction. “This course can make other science courses more meaningful, and when students go to Physics 203 or Biology 101, they already have questions in mind, and they tend to listen better.”
While developing his course – a process that’s far from complete – Lu said he’s learned that students enjoy pursuing their own interests even when the pursuit is challenging.
“They want exposure to real-world science, and that’s really key,” he said. “They’re also very receptive to the community we build in this class, and they form long-term friendships. They care deeply about the community, and they appreciate the mentor relationships with their peers.”
Lu admits to some frustration when it comes to the retention, which is about 50 percent. “We encourage students to come back for the full four years, but we can’t require it. When I ask administrators to make this a required course, the answer is always the same – ‘What other courses do I take off the required list to do that?’ ” he said, adding day-to-day schedule conflicts have also been a problem.
“All the students we survey who’ve failed to come back have said they love the course, but they’ve had conflicts or need to fulfill degree requirements, particularly in their junior and senior years.”
He said using the Classroom Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE), an online program developed by Grinnell College’s David Lopatto, a psychology professor specializing in learning and motivation, has been extremely helpful when it comes to making course adjustments and improvements.
A CURE survey conducted in spring 2007 indicates that the mean rating of the students in the course on 21 areas of research experience is statistically significantly higher than the overall mean ratings by the reference cohort of students who completed the CURE survey in the spring of 2007 in other colleges and universities. One exciting finding from the survey is that, while the national CURE average rated “oral presentation” to be among the lowest, the students in Lu’s course rated the gain to be the highest, bucking the national trend.
This result strongly suggests that the course’s focus on oral presentation at the freshmen level is working.
