Recording videos for Coursera - the technology

We (me and the guys of the Centre for Teaching and Learning Technology) have started working out the best conditions for recording all the lecture videos. We have a lot of factors to consider - for most of these Coursera provides detailed advice, which we're modifying to suit our circumstances.  This is all very new to me, so what I've written below will probably sound very naive to anyone with video experience.

Planning the Useful Genetics weekly modules

Part 1.  Genotype and phenotype

We should have one learning objective for each video (one video for each learning objective)

1.  How much humans are the same genetically, and how much we differ.  DNA, genes, chromosomes and genomes are all both physical entities and informational entities.  One video for each of these (with usages and representations)?.  Ploidy and the basic cycle of sexual reproduction. Populations, races and out of Africa. SNPs?

2.  How DNA molecules become different. Comparing DNA sequences.  Polymerases.  Mutations happen and are passed on to the next generation.  DNA repair.  Mutation rates and frequencies.  70 new point mutations in each baby, most from Daddy.  Do we need to worry about mutagens (yes for cancer, no for babies)?  Start considering how DNA differences affect what genes do (this will also teach more about genes).  Genes and proteins - what proteins do.  The genetic code.

3.  Lots about how DNA differences (mutations and polymorphisms) affect proteins and protein functions (or not).  Heterozygosity issues.  'Mendelian' and 'quantitative' effects (not these terms). Chromosome differences, aneuploidies.  Gene families.  Homologous genes in other species let us use animals as 'models' for human diseases.

4.  Predicting phenotypes from genotypes.  Sex chromosomes, X inactivation.   Genes and cancer.  Thinking about risks and probabilities.  Genes and behaviour.

5.  Personal genomics.  What can we know (will we be able to know) about our genotypes?  Gene-typing.  SNP-typing.  Exome sequencing.  Genome sequencing.  Transgenic organisms.  Genetic modifications (GMOs). Gene therapy.  Forensic DNA identification. 


Part 2.  Inheritance

6.  Can I start with something catchy?  The mechanics of inheritance.  DNA structure again.  Chromosome structure again.  Mitosis: the problem and the solution.  Meiosis uses this solution but now problem with new solution.  Mating"  gametes don't know their genotypes, random encounters.  Following genotypes through.  Physical molecules and information again.

7.  Consequences of the mechanism of inheritance.  Almost all variation was present in a parent.  Probabilities.  Interacting with risks and with other genes.  Errors in the mechanism (cause translocations, aneuploidies etc.)

8.  Linked genes, genetic maps, sex-linked inheritance. Chromosome rearrangements and fertility.  Paternity and relationship testing.  Inbreeding/selfing.

9.  Heritability.  Twin studies.  Environment and chance play big roles.  The 'missing heritability': contributions of gene interactions.  GWAS. 

10.   Epigenetics.  Mitochondrial genes.  Mosaicism.  Fetal DNA in mothers.  Other cool stuff we can now understand.

Seriously beginning to prepare for Useful Genetics

My Useful Genetics MOOC now has more than 8000 students signed up.  It won't be offered until May (6 months form now), but there's so much preparation that I'm already in danger of panic unless I get things under way now.  Last week I meet with the CTLT (Centre for Teaching and Learning Technology) team, and then with the instructional designer specifically working on my course.

Avoiding the 'exercise bike' problem with MOOCs

Over the past few days I've been reading what seems like hundreds of articles and blog posts about MOOCs.  This is mostly because I've discovered a number of sites that aggregate these articles in convenient ways.  I've given up trying to remember everything I read about MOOCs - I'm just letting the flood wash over me and seeing what might stick.

But I want to think a bit more about one article (or is it a blog?): MOOCs and exercise bikes: more in common than you'd think.  Although some writers see the high attrition rate of MOOCs to be evidence of failure, I've been taking more of a toe-in-the-waters view - the barriers to signing up for a MOOC are so low that of course lots of enrollees will subsequently decide not to continue. 

This article suggests a different perspective, that of the well-meaning learner who somehow loses motivation.  Just like with that exercise bike, they feel bad about dropping out, and really wish they could have continued.  Sometimes they will have stopped for a solid reason (bike equivalent - sprained ankle), but for many it was just lack of motivation.  They know that they're missing a lot by not keeping up with the work, but their motivation fades and they're left with another failed attempt at learning.

So how can I build features into Useful Genetics that will help students stick with the course and get the full benefits of the course and the personal reinforcement of being a successful learner?  

One part of the solution is course-specific - building relevance into every week's work.  For Useful Genetics, week 1 is likely to be highly motivating (how people differ), but the next few weeks material may be very dry (gene expression, how heredity works), and I can see a lot of attrition happening here unless I make a special effort to prevent that.

Another other part of the solution is more general.  What features of courses make them easier to stick with to completion? I haven't seen much discussion of this yet.  Maybe this is one of the things that course-analytics can help with.  (If any readers know of studies, please post them in the comments.)

The exercise-bike article mentions the motivational benefits of being part of a group.  I don't think this motivation can come from the discussion forums; there are too many participants.  Face-to-face study groups are great, and I can encourage students to form them, but these won't be an option for most people.  But there might be a way to have people form interest-group-based online study groups, for genetic diseases or dog breeding or political concerns or whatever.  Perhaps, once I see the feedback from the 'Why are you taking this course' part of the initial survey, I can encourage the formation of many small discussion groups focused on the specific motivations students describe.

Doing for math what I want to do for genetics

Keith Devlin is teaching a Coursera course titled Introduction to Mathematical Thinking, and he's blogging about the experience here.

In his latest post he discusses the relationship between what his course aims to teach and what is usually taught in post-secondary mathematics courses.  To paraphrase slightly, he contrasts the formalism of pure mathematics ("chess on steroids") with the role that abstract, pure reasoning plays in dealing with the more messy issues of the real world.  Few students can really appreciate the former, but they all can benefit from the latter, so that's what his course teaches.

This is a lot like what I hope to do with genetics, since I want to replace much of the formalism of Mendelian analysis with reasoning how genetic effects play out in the world our students live in.

He's planning to use calibrated peer review for his final exam.  I'll be very interested to see how this works in Coursera because I want to make extensive use of it in Useful Genetics.  I've used the standard version of CPR in my BIOL 234 genetics course (see here and here), but Coursera describes their version as 'beta' so I don't know how good or solid it is.

Thinking about Peter Sloep's comments

Peter Sloep has some thoughtful comments in his Networked Learning Scoop-it on my MOOC-opalypse post.  Here's his comments in purple, and my responses in black:

The line of argument followed in this essay is a familiar one: MOOCs are there to stay, there are all these apocalyptic predictions about the disappearance of colleges and universities as we know them, hence, to stay employed, I'd better make the student experience worth their money. Apart from the observation that it is a bit ironic that only now that jobs are on the line we start thinking about giving value for money, there are many problems with this kind of argument.

I was joking about being concerned about my job; I'll probably be over-the-hill by the time academia feels the big impacts of MOOCs.

First, Rosie argues from the assumption that MOOC-courses are bound to improve shortly. I am not so sure, I actually think that on the average, when more people jump on the MOOC bandwagon, the quality will go down. Yes, the better courses may be tweaked to offer a better learning experience, for instance by replacing the fora with more intelligent ones that help the learner find sensible stuff amongst the massive number of not-so-useful entries.

If most of the people who jump on the MOOC bandwagon are only doing so because it's trendy, we might see a decrease in average course quality.  I don't think that's likely - I expect most institutions will try to produce good courses, and as more courses are out there, competition will motivate improvement.  But even if the average course quality is no better,  having more courses will mean we have more good courses.

Second, Rosie guesses that flipped classrooms, which provide tutoring next to a (free) MOOC, won't convince the students. That depends, I would say. Read Jonathan Marks' contribution, sitting next to this one. Also, she believes "nobody knows enough about how learning works to do a credible job of this". That simply isn't true. There is a long tradition of research on distance education which explains how to do this online and much research on learning in face-to-face settings other than classrooms and lecture halls which offers valuable insights (see my blog on Katie Vale's presentation, below). It is true, though, that this research has often been ignored by people used to and happy with ordinary lecturing.

I stand by the 'nobody knows enough...' statement. There's a fair bit of research and some valuable insights (including those that motivate flipped classrooms), but not nearly as much as we need.

Third, Rosie then concludes that "[...] one advantage a university gains by offering Coursera courses is that the enormous numbers of students and the online record-keeping make it possible to collect unprecedented amounts of data about student learning. But in practice most of the data will be worthless unless we carefully design our courses as learning experiments.' Under the label of learning analytics such data collection is already taking place and delivering insights. And, yes, it does make sense to carefully design courses as learning experiments. That is precisely what Harvard is doing with its EdX platform (again, see Kathie Vale). I would hope many more colleges start to do so, designing other learning environments than the default lecture hall and learn from the experience.

I couldn't find the Kathie Vale link, nor anything by Googling her.  I read the Wikipedia entry on Learning Analytics, which reinforced my impression that this is primarily a set of tools we can use in our learning experiments.  Learning analytics can be applied to 'found' data (e.g. any Coursera course) but is going to be most valuable in the context of carefully designed experiments.
 
In summary, I don't believe the apocalyptic predictions about MOOCs for one minute. The educational landscape, shaped by learning needs and wants on the one hand and forms and environments for learning on the other, is too vast and rugged to be surveyd to the full by a search party led by commercial MOOC providers alone. However, it is a good thing we start to question the traditional, much trodden roads to learning. If that is what they manage to achieve, we should thank them for that. (peter sloep, @pbsloep)

I don't really think that the rise of MOOCs will lead to the collapse of universities.  Not because universities deserve to be preserved in their present form, but because the whole structure of higher education is so very very conservative that even apocalyptic forces will cause only slow incremental changes.  But I'll save this for another post.
   

Preparing for the MOOC-ocalypse

MO-OCalypse?  MOOC-apocalypse? (Oops, apocalypse is one of those words that, if you look too closely, always appears wrongly spelled.)  

A UBC colleague who's also going to be producing a Coursera course got me thinking about the future of the university.

He starts with two reasonable assumptions:  First, the diversity and quality of Coursera-like courses is going to increase rapidly over the next few years.  Second, universities/faculty members/students are discovering that face-to-face lecturing in large classes is not the best use of student or faculty time and effort, and they will move toward 'flipped' classes where students use class videos and other online resources to learn the course content and then use classroom time for problem solving and interactive learning.

Creating the online resources for a flipped course is a big investment of technical resources and instructor time.  So, for both instructors and administrators, it will make sense to instead use the resources of any appropriate Coursera courses.  Contemplating this for very long leads one to various philosophical considerations, such as "Since Coursera courses are free, why would students pay to go to university?" and then "Yikes, what will become of my job??!!!"

For a university education to be perceived as worth the tuition, it won't be enough to supplement the free Coursera material with scheduled classroom peer-teaching experiences and a tutorial taught by a graduate student.  The university needs to develop integrated programs with hands-on and face-to-face experiences that are seen as worth the cost.

Unfortunately, nobody knows enough about how learning works to do a credible job of this.  So if the university is to avoid selling programs with little demonstrated value, it needs to gather the information that will let it create genuine value.

Ironically, the best way to prepare for this MOOC-opalypse may be to become part of the problem by teaching a MOOC.  In principle, one advantage a university gains by offering Coursera courses or other MOOCs is that the enormous numbers of students and the online record-keeping make it possible to collect unprecedented amounts of data about student learning.  But in practice most of the data will be worthless unless we carefully design our courses as learning experiments.  That sentence makes it sound like designing a course to be a learning experiment is something I know how to do.  It's not.  And I'm not likely to have the time to do this even if I had the expertise.

On the other hand, my course is best-positioned to become an experiment, since it's the least developed of the three UBC Coursera offerings.  UBC has offered Climate Literacy as a fully online Continuing Studies course (non-credit) for several years, and I think Introduction to Systematic Program Design is going to be an online version of CPSC 110.   Although Useful Genetics will build on what I've taught in BIOL 234 - Fundamentals of Genetics, it's basically a new course.  But if we're going to use Useful Genetics as an experiment in online learning we need to start now, because it will be too late once I've developed all the components.

So I'm emailing UBC's Centre for Teaching and Learning Technology (CTLT) to ask if they have a support person assigned to work on course-evaluation development for the Coursera courses.

Later: CTLT responded that this will be discussed at a meeting they're organizing with the Coursera instructors.  I think this means "Not yet, but maybe..."

First week

 

Well, my Useful Genetics course has been up on Coursera for a week, and 3500 people have signed up. Although that's not dazzling by Coursera standards, if signups continue at this rate there will be about 50,000 students by the time I send out the 'Useful Genetics starts soon' email in April.  I expect about half of the enrollees (is that a word?) will then say 'What was I thinking - I've no time for this!'.

Yesterday I met with the instructional technology people to discuss options for recording the many short videos we'll need.  The first decision needs to be between recording in my office or recording at UBC's Telestudios down the hill.  The latter would give better video quality and save me having to learn how to do it myself, but I'd be giving up the ability to make last-minute changes and to easily update videos from one session of the course to another. 

And this morning I had coffee with instructors for UBC's other two Coursera courses, Climate Literacy and Systematic Program Design.  We're coming from very different perspectives and experiences (both academic and pedagogical), so pooling our information and questions will be very valuable.

Useful Genetics!

Next spring I'm going to be teaching a 'massively open online course' (a MOOC) titled Useful Genetics.  You can read all about it here: https://www.coursera.org/course/usefulgenetics.

The motivation for this course arises from the opinion piece I published a few months ago in PLOS Biology - "Why do we have to learn this stuff?" a new genetics for 21st century students.  My goal will be to teach an academically rigorous genetics course that cuts out the no-longer-relevant stuff and emphasizes the parts useful to non-scientists.

It will be sufficiently different from conventional genetics courses that I think I'll have to develop most of it from scratch, including learning how to make videos.  Luckily I'll have the support of UBC's awesome Centre for Teaching and Learning Technology.

The current icon and promo video were made in a rush (UBC didn't get everyone on side until the last minute.  The video is OK for now, but the icon is slick and content-free:

I hope to soon replace it with something like this:

Should we really give Mendel the boot?

My Perspectives article about reforming genetics education is up at PLoS Biology (Why do we have to learn this stuff? A new genetics for 21st century students).  There's lots of chatter on Twitter, but I gather that nobody likes using the commenting system on the PLoS Biology site.

I really want to get feedback on the article, so I'm hoping people will post their reactions and ideas here.

To get things started, I'll reiterate my main point:

The first goal of a modern basic genetics course should be to provide students with an understanding of genetic principles and processes that will be useful in their non-academic lives. 

If we agree on this, then we can discuss how best to accomplish this goal (what will be useful and how should it be taught).  If not, let's discuss what the main goal should be.

Giving Mendel the boot

This is a teaser for my opinion piece on how the teaching of genetics should be changed, which has now been accepted by PLoS Biology.  It should be out soon, so below I'm just going to put the title and the blurb:

"Why do we have to learn this stuff?"  

A new genetics for 21st century students.

Our students will go out into an astonishing new world of engineered genes and personal genomics, so why is the standard genetics syllabus stuck in the 1950s?

A modern genetics problem

This problem was on the final exam of our new Fundamentals of Genetics course.  It's an example of what I'd like our students to be able to do.

(10 points)  The ideogram above shows a normal child’s genome, with her chromosomes coloured by 23andMe to show the results of genotyping her DNA and the DNAs of her maternal grandparents.  Blue segments indicate blocks of alleles shared with her maternal grandmother, and white segments indicate blocks of alleles shared with her maternal grandfather.  Hatched segments could not be analyzed because they have too few SNPs.

a. (1 point)  What genetic process is responsible for these blocks of alleles?

b. (2 points)  When and where did this process occur?

c. (2 points)  What property of the child’s maternal chromosomes 11 and 14 is unexpected?  Why is this property unexpected?

d. (4 points)  Suggest two different kinds of events that could explain this unexpected property.  Give rough estimates of the probabilities of the events you propose.

e. (1 point)  The black triangles above some chromosomes show the locations of SNPs linked to effects on nose shape.  What do these predict about the child’s appearance?

What genetics should all our students learn? ("Stop, we're teaching the wrong stuff!")

Several years ago I was asked to take charge of developing a new second-year 'fundamentals of genetics' course, to replace our program's long-standing third-year course (a legacy from David Suzuki and Tony Griffiths).  So I put together a committee of genetics instructors (profs, sessionals, a TA), and we developed a new set of learning objectives and an ordered list of topics to be covered (a syllabus).  The committee then disbanded , leaving me to implement its work, first as a small pilot class (last winter) and then as a regular course (just finished).

We thought we had been quite radical, because we'd made a very big change in how our course would teach the two big concepts students needed to master - how genotype determines phenotype and how genetic information is inherited.  Traditional genetics courses start with Mendel, and, following in Mendel's footsteps, use analysis of crosses to reveal all the basic concepts of classical genetics; this is Suzuki's 'Genetic Analysis' approach.  Our new syllabus began not with Mendel but with three weeks about how genotype determines phenotype (no crosses yet), followed by two weeks just about how inheritance works (leaving phenotypes out entirely)  Only then would it introduce Mendelian genetics, and then use the standard genetic analysis framework to teach the more complex concepts.

It wasn't until I started to teach the pilot section that I realized we'd been much too conservative.  We'd simply assumed that the goal was to teach students the standard 'classical genetics' concepts.  But what we should have done is first thought long and hard about what students should be learning in a modern 'fundamentals of genetics' course.  That is, what genetics facts and concepts will our students actually use, not just in later courses but in the rest of their lives?

Way back, the answer was that students needed to learn genetic analysis, for two reasons:  First, analysis of how phenotypes are inherited in crosses used to be the most powerful tool for understanding how organisms work.  Even if students weren't going to go on to do this analysis themselves, as biologists they needed to understand how it was done.  And following in the footsteps of the great geneticists was thought to be the best way to learn it.  Second, genetic analysis is hard, and learning to do it trains the mind in rigorous thinking.  Genetics students' experience at solving complex genetic problems was expected to make them better at solving all kinds of problems, in everyday life as well as academia.

Although genetics has changed dramatically, this motivation has largely been left unquestioned.  Although I didn't buy the 'following in the footsteps' part, I accepted the rest.  But the importance of classical genetic analysis to biology is shrinking day by day, displaced by powerful molecular methods.  Worse, improved understanding of students' learning suggests that most genetics students pass their exams using pattern-matching rather than the general problem-solving skills we thought they were developing.

So, what should today's biology students take away from a 'fundamentals of genetics' course?  What will they use in later courses?  What will they use in the rest of their lives?  Are there other concepts that every educated person know about?

So here's a partial list of learning objectives for a modern course in the fundamentals of genetics.  Yes, I know these aren't all phrased as actions students should be able to do, they aren't in a sensible order, the list is incomplete, and the syntax isn't even consistent.  PLEASE give me suggestions for improvement in the comments.

• Students should be able to detect basic errors in news coverage of genetics stories.
• Students should be able to understand why a genetic test or sequencing aids medical diagnosis and treatment.
• They should understand how genetic differences affect health risks.
• Which genetic principles apply to all organisms.
• The extent to which the differences between individuals (humans and other species) are due to differences in their genes.
• How the phenotypes of diploid organisms are affected by interactions between different versions of a single genes, and between different versions of different genes.
• How offspring inherit genetic information from their parents (how meiosis and mating work).
• How genes and genomes change over the generations and over evolutionary time.
• At a simple level, how control of gene expression leads to differentiated phenotypes (a special case of gene interactions).
• They should be able to think about ethical and societal issues arising from genetics.

Twitter in the classroom?

The big 'Fundamentals of Genetics' course starts on Wednesday, and I'm going to try letting students ask questions in class with Twitter.  Of course they'll still also be able to ask their questions the old-fashioned way, by raising their hands, but Twitter has some nice features.

I'll tell students that, if they have a question about what I'm saying, they can post it to Twitter with the hashtag #biol234.  When it's time to pause for questions, I'll display the #biol234 Twitter feed on the screen for everyone to see.  Maybe I'll give us all a minute to read the top questions, and then I'll answer them, integrating answers to different questions where this makes sense.  And then I'll ask for verbal questions.

Students in the class can follow the #biol234 feed on their smartphones and laptops, and can 'retweet' questions that they think important.   Questions that are retweeted will rise to the top of the feed list.  The lecture room has two screens, so I plan to use one for the powerpoint slides from my laptop and a second for internet content from the built-in podium computer.  (This screen will be blanked when I'm don't want students to attend to it.)  One web tab will be the Twitter feed, ideally set so only the top 5 or so questions are visible. 

Other features and concerns?

Students can also use Twitter to answer simple questions posed by other students.

Students who want to contribute will need to have Twitter accounts as well as smartphones or laptops.  This is good - I don't want questions to be posted anonymously, as this can lead to silliness and unpleasantness.

Students won't be disadvantaged by not participating.  If they don't bring laptops or smartphones to class, or just don't want to use them for this, they'll still see the Twitter feed and and my responses.

Won't students who follow the #biol234 feed on their smartphones/laptops be distracted?  Well, they'll be distracted from watching me, but at least they'll be thinking about the material.

One thing I really like about this is that it will help shift the focus from answers to questions.

If this works well I'll need to shorten the presentation parts of my classes, to allow more time for the questions, but this is something I'd want to do anyway.

I don't know anything about Twitter apps, but I suspect that the Twitter web site isn't the best interface for what I want to do.   I'll probably ask the students for suggestions, but I'd appreciate any suggestions from readers.

Teaching evaluations

Results of student survey: no need to have a focus group

I've analyzed the preliminary results of my student survey.  It provides some ideas of ways the course could be improved, but my focus-group experts agree that it doesn't raise any issues deserving focus-group investigation.

What they said:

Agree/disagree (~Likert scale):

1. I had the necessary background for the course.  Most agreed
2. The readings and reading quizzes prepared me for the lectures. Neutral
3. The iClicker questions were not challenging enough. Most disagreed
4. The Genetics in the News slides took too much time away from course material. Neutral
5. The homework increased my comprehension of the lecture material. Most weakly agreed
6. The tutorials helped me learn to solve genetics problems. Most agreed
7. Having two mini-midterms and a midterm was too much testing. Most disagreed
8. The course grade was based on too many different components. Most disagreed
9. The workload was much higher than for other courses. Neutral
10. I feel prepared to deal with genetics issues that may arise in my life. Most agreed

 Written Answer Questions:

1. Should any topics be cut from the course material?  Most said no.
2. Were any topics missing from the course that you wish had been covered? Most said no.
3. A pizza-lunch focus group will be held later this month; all students are welcome to attend. Please mention below any specific issues that should be raised then.  Below is what they said:

• Workload, discrepancy between difficulty of lecture material and what was tested (in tutorials, reading quizzes, midterms, etc.)
• The tempo of the class. The first half seems like a review, and all the new stuff are in the second part. 
• Methods of assessing learning in this course. 
• No specific issues. 
• How much we liked the format of the lectures -the methods in which we tried to prepare for exams
• Mini-Midterm format. I think that the midterm was a fair examination however, the second mini midterm had a multiple choice question that had about 9 choices and was worth about 6 marks. I felt I did good on the rest of the exam but still didn't get a great mark because of 1 MC question.
• How to study for the final. Every test has been a different format, what to expect. 
• I would like to suggest ways to make homework more helpful in preparing us for the exams. Also, maybe investment
• into custom booklets with some notes and problems sets like Bio 201. 
• They are too little guidance in this course
• Tested materials --> what to expect in midterms/exams weren't very clear 
• Overall structure of how the course will be run next year. Textbook assignment and readings. Better formatting for the meiosis/mitosis content from the beginning of the year - personally I am still fuzzy, even though the concepts were stressed to be very important. 
• I think going over online homework and reading quiz questions in class would help. Or perhaps explanations for the answers could be posted online because there are still questions that I don't understand. I also think the amount of work this course requires should be re-evaluated. The amount of reading is quite heavy and having two quizzes (homework and reading) PLUS peerwise PLUS tutorial each week is a lot.
• How this course and its changes (234 vs. 334) related to other courses, such as Biol 335. 
• How to study genetics
• I think that the easiness of this course should be covered. I felt that this course reviewed a lot of material and didn't cover that much new material.

Ranking the course components:

Many components of this course contribute to the final grade. Please try to rank them according to how valuable you found them, taking into account your learning gains and the amount of time you invested in them. For example, an activity that took a lot of your time but resulted in little learning would score low.

• Tutorials  High
• Peerwise questions  Low
• SNP report  Low
• Calibrated Peer Review  Low
• Online homework  High
• Reading quizzes  No consensus
• Studying for midterms  No consensus
• Attending lectures  High

Only 21 of the 38 students have completed the survey so far.  That's certainly enough to go on, but I'll reanalyze the responses after the final exam marks have been posted (that's the last time the students will give any thought to the course).

The focus group plan

OK, I've consulted with the local experts.  They had excellent advice on how to proceed, and will be able to run the focus group for us if we decide it's what we need.

The first step is to analyze the responses from my student survey.  The survey questions are pasted below - for the purpose of the focus group the most important question was the one asking for topics for a focus group.  Once I've consolidated the responses I'll send them to the local experts and we can decide whether  issues were raised that should be considered by a focus group.  For a one-hour group we only want two or three such issues, and maybe one in reserve.

An ideal focus group would be about 6 students, and as few as three would be OK, so I think we can safely schedule it in May rather than before the final exam.  (And we do have money for pizza in the course budget.)

Survey Questions:

Agree/disagree (~Likert scale):

1. I had the necessary background for the course.
2. The readings and reading quizzes prepared me for the lectures.
3. The iClicker questions were not challenging enough.
4. The Genetics in the News slides took too much time away from course material.
5. The homework increased my comprehension of the lecture material.
6. The tutorials helped me learn to solve genetics problems.
7. Having two mini-midterms and a midterm was too much testing.
8. The course grade was based on too many different components.
9. The workload was much higher than for other courses.
10. I feel prepared to deal with genetics issues that may arise in my life.

 Written Answer Questions:

1. Should any topics be cut from the course material?
2. Were any topics missing from the course that you wish had been covered?
3. A pizza-lunch focus group will be held later this month; all students are welcome to attend. Please mention below any specific issues that should be raised then.

 Ranking the course components:

Many components of this course contribute to the final grade. Please try to rank them according to how valuable you found them, taking into account your learning gains and the amount of time you invested in them. For example, an activity that took a lot of your time but resulted in little learning would score low.

• Tutorials
• Peerwise questions
• SNP report
• Calibrated Peer Review
• Online homework
• Reading quizzes
• Studying for midterms
• Attending lectures

Focus group?

I've been advised that the best way to collect useful feedback from the students in my genetics pilot course is to have a focus group.  This initially seemed like a great idea (book a room, order pizza, tell the students), but I'm gradually realizing that implementing it will be difficult.  Several issues need to be dealt with.

First, I don't even know what running a focus group involves.  I expect that the discussion would need to be coordinated, and some record of the discussion kept.  This might just be notes, but an audio or video recording would be better.  But if a recording was made, then someone would have to later go through the recording, pulling out the important information.  And if there's no recording, would the person who is coordinating the discussion also be able to take the notes, or would a separate note-taker be needed?   How much expertise is needed to coordinate the discussion - can the needed skills be picked up in 5 minutes, or is formal training desirable?

Second, who is available to do this (call them the 'facilitator')?  To get uninhibited discussion the facilitator shouldn't have been involved in teaching the course or grading the students.  The person who recommended having a focus group initially suggested having the course TA run it.  This would be only slightly better than having me run it, and the TA quickly pointed out that she was not an appropriate facilitator.

There are other instructors who I could ask to act as facilitator, but I have no idea  (1)how much work I would be asking of them; (2) whether this would be considered a personal favour or part of their job; (3) whether any of them have whatever skills or experience a facilitator needs.  Might there be a Faculty of Science teaching/research person who could do this?  Should I contact our Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology for help?

Third, I also don't know when we should hold the focus group.  I was initially thinking that we should do it in the week before the final exam.  The exam is scheduled for April 28, the very last day of the three-week exam period.  But the TA thought we should have it in May - she says many students will still be around.  And do we want to ask students to sign up for this, or just run it as a drop-in group?

Finally, who pays for the pizza?  Is there a special fund for course-development activities, or should it come out of the course's photocopying/petty cash budget?

I think I had better turn this post into an email to the person who suggested a focus group and to the head of the teaching-research group, so I can get their advice.

Classes are over

Yesterday was the last lecture of the genetics pilot course.  I combined a review with specific everyday cases where knowledge of genetics would be useful, all framed as 'a friend or family member asks your advice, because you're now the genetics expert'.

Now I just need to prepare a final exam (and a sample final), and pull together as much feedback as possible to use in preparing for September.  I've given the class an on-line survey, and they'll do the usual post-course teaching evaluation, but we're also going to have a focus group in the week before the final, with pizza. 

Planning next year's tutorials

The other day I sat down with my favourite pedagogy expert to discuss how to improve the tutorials for the new genetics course.  I'm quite happy with the problem-solving component of the present tutorials, but they still need a component that develops students' reading-interpretation and connection-making skills.  We came up with a plan that I think will work well.

Any plan has to deal with the big practical problems.  First, students much prefer activities that they see as directly useful, and activities that will improve such fuzzy and poorly defined skills as reading-interpretation and connection-making fall far below activities that will directly improve their grade.  Second, most of the students are very anxious about speaking in class.  Third, even experienced and skilled teaching assistants are understandably reluctant to impose tutorial activities that the students don't like.  Fourth, many of our teaching assistants will be inexperienced and unskilled.

Under the new plan, students will spend the first part of each tutorial analyzing one or two short readings taken from textbooks.  They won't have to do any extra preparation for this, as the material they'll be analyzing will be part of the preparatory readings recommended for that week's classes (motivated by the weekly Reading Quiz).  They should see the analyses as directly useful, because the texts (and associated figures) will be about topics they need to master to pass the course.

In each tutorial, about 30-45 minutes will be spent on activities using these readings.  These are 2 hour tutorials, and the rest of the time will be spent working on a complex genetics problem (described in the last paragraph below).  They'll first work in pairs or small groups with a clear goal, such as

• 'Identify a question you'd like to ask the author of this paragraph.' 
• 'What are the important differences between the information presented by the paragraphs from two different textbooks?' 
• 'How does the figure clarify the text?  What potential confusion does it clear up?'

Then the ideas from the groups will be discussed by the class.  I think that students are more comfortable reporting what their group came up with than describing their own ideas directly.  They could either form groups on their own, or the groups could be pre-assigned by the TA.

In the first few weeks of the class, the TA will then use one of the two texts to demonstrate one way to diagram the relationships of ideas in a text (one week hierarchical diagrams, another week flow charts, another week concept maps).  The students will then individually create this type of diagram for the other text they've been analyzing, and hand this in.  In later weeks the TA demonstration won't be needed, and the students can diagram the text in any way they like.  The TAs will mark the diagrams out of 2 points (1 for any attempt, 2 for something good), and return them to the students at the next class..

My pedagogy expert and I considered ways to let the students also look over what other students had done.  We didn't decide on anything, but later I came up with something that might be good.  The TA could hand the marked diagrams to random students (not to their authors).  Each student gets a minute to look over the diagram they've been handed before finding its author and giving it back to them.  This will be an ice-breaker, a minute of chaos that will get students talking and help them meet each other.  If we wanted to designate the pairs or groups that will discuss the new assigned text (rather than letting students pick their friends), returning the diagrams could also assemble the groups  - each report could be given to another member of the designated group.  One other possibility we discussed was having the TA choose one diagram from each tutorial and give photocopies to all the students.

Because the students should see this text-analysis process as valuable and non-threatening, the TAs should be comfortable leading it.  In the weekly TA meeting we'll prepare them by going over the readings with them, pointing out ways to help students develop their ideas.  We'll also show them how to teach the diagram-creating activity.  We'll make sure they know how to do the marking very quickly, without worrying about details.

A note about the problem solving part of the tutorials:  We've developed a complex genetics problem for each tutorial.  Students get the introductory information and one or two relatively simple questions ahead of time, and are expected to hand in the answer(s) at the start of the tutorial.  After the text-analysis, they spend the rest of the tutorial working through this problem in groups (mostly at the chalkboards) and discussing the answers to the questions it poses.  Finally the chalkboards are erased and the students are given a sheet with one or two of these questions, which they answer and hand in.  As with the text-analysis activity, the TAs are given lots of preparation for this problem-solving activity and for grading the answers (again 1 point for any attempt, 2 for a good answer).  The intent is that the TA meeting will fully prepare the TAs for their tutorials, and that the grading will not take more than one hour for each tutorial.

Once classes end next week, we're going to spend time developing the materials we have into a draft set of TA materials for each week.