Grant makes research-based instruction a four year plan at UW-Whitewater
Released: July 8, 2003
Reform-minded faculty have known for decades that science, much like art or music, is best learned by doing. Yet most of the incentives for doing science, such as research grants, capstone programs and independent study, don’t kick in until junior and senior years.
Which begs the question: Why deny freshmen the opportunity?
That’s the question behind a new curriculum initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, supported by a $170,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. A team of biology professors plan to rebuild the introductory plant and animal biology courses around research experiences, with the hope of substantially increasing the knowledge students retain.
“The greatest value of science is not in its results, but in its process,” says Jeffrey McKinnon, a UW-Whitewater biologist and principal investigator in this project. “These are the types of skills that can be adapted to all kinds of endeavors. Research promotes kind of a formalized common sense. It’s also a lot more fun.”
In the 1990s, there was a lot of reflection about how science was taught — and for good reason, McKinnon says. Why would science teaching bear so little resemblance to how science is practiced in the field and in industry? Memorizing terms and reaching pre-determined conclusions in labs has limited long-term benefit to students.
McKinnon estimates that about 80 percent of all students who take first-year biology courses go in a different direction, never getting exposed to the process of science.
The curriculum overhaul will focus on the two four-credit introductory courses in animal emphasis and plant emphasis. Once traditional materials are covered, the courses will introduce some well-established experimental models for student research projects. For example, genetics will be explored using yeast; hormones will be explored using a type of fast-growing plant; and ecology and behavior will be tested using freshwater crustaceans. All three of these experiments will fit into a larger theme of understanding evolution, McKinnon says.
The project is aimed at majors and non-majors alike, and will be taught to as many as 1,000 students per year. UW-Whitewater has about 350 majors in biology, up from less than 100 only a decade ago.
UW-Whitewater is ideally suited for this teaching experiment, McKinnon says. The university has smaller class sizes and faculty who teach both lectures and labs. The campus also has been a top participant in the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR), hosting the national conference in 2002 and routinely sending more than 50 student presenters each year.
“We’re going to make this a centerpiece of our laboratories in the first year,” McKinnon says. “If we get our students off to a fast start in learning and research, we’re going to have a dynamite program.”
Teaching collaborators include biology faculty members Kerry Katovich, Claudia Olivier and Neil Sawyer. John Stone and Steve Friedman of the LEARN Center will lead the evaluation of the project. Reviewers from University of Virginia, University of Pittsburgh, Wells College and Juniata College will also participate.
Coincidentally, the program will be fully implemented and tested by the time the Upham Hall renovation project is completed in winter 1994. That project aims to fully modernize all laboratories in the university’s science program.
- Melissa DiMotto,dimottom@uww.edu
