IndiaBioscience - Education from 2012

Should we de-test the testing times?

2012-07-03T00:00:00+05:30

It has been dawning on me, that maybe the first year of an investigator’s independent career is the time for one to go through many experiences that we were only part of vicariously earlier. The best examples is being a part of the selection committee for the Ph.D. program and setting papers for entrance. For the first time, I became aware of the extent of commitment involved in the process of candidates selection, interviews and then preparation of the final list. I must admit that I relished every bit of process. It is quite an experience and quite daunting as well to be on the other side of the table. Little did I realize earlier, the precautions that are taken to ensure that the entire process of selecting candidate is fair.

This experience, concurrently with the debate about multiple examinations and tests really got me thinking about various aspects of selecting students for each program. In IISER, Bhopal alone, we received applications in far greater numbers than the students we can actually take. So we had to find a way to shortlist the candidates – after much debate we decided not to hold another entrance test as most of these candidates have already cleared a national level examination. So the task ahead of us was to set conditions so that we invite enough applicants for interviews.

At present almost every national level institute/educational body in our country conducts its own tests. Why these redundant tests for candidates if they have cleared the national level exams like CSIR/UGC NET, GATE, ICMR etc. To anyone who has sat in interviews, it is clear that very often the ability of a student does not correlate with their ranking in the above exams. So are these exams dysfunctional? Or is it that we have to change the questioning to cater to specific courses/career paths. For example – quantitative abilities correlated with speed might matter for Business schools, while analytical ability is much more important for Ph.D. programs. One question that stands tall in front of us is how meaningful are these national level exams or have they just become modality to cope up with population phenomenon?

While being part of the two back-to-back events that probe a candidate’s ability I asked myself if we really need multiple exams or can one common test serve the same purpose.

If I go by the precedence the GRE exam sets for selection of Ph.D. candidates in United States of America then we don’t need different institutes conducting their own exams. Granted, the GRE does have its issues wherein some of the brightest students aren’t able to do as well. Still, a national level examination across the country with the institutes and universities defining their priorities for interviews has many advantages. For one, it eases the pressure on the students, who would only have to prepare and work towards one test rather than multiple. For the institutions, it saves on funds, manpower and most importantly time.

However, I do think, that it is important to tailor the examinations towards the course/program that the candidate is applying for. In biology/Ph.D programs, majority of these tests fail to gauge, the logical reasoning, aptitude and ability to analyze, all of which are qualities that are expected out of a Ph.D. student. So it is important to customize written exams that will serve the purpose of shortlisting the number of students we can comfortably interview. It is pretty obvious that there would be significant overlap in the number of candidates that each institute prepares. Maybe, another aspect to the applications could be a statement by the students illustrating their interest in the program, as well as recommendations. These aspects are already incorporated in the selection of candidates at various institutions.

So the question that has been hovering over my head is, are we doing any justice to the society by having multiple exams at particular level? Engineering and Medical systems in the country have already set such precedence by having single test for multiple institutes across the country. Should we also adopt a common research test that probes the aptitude and logical reasoning or no such test and rely absolutely on national level exams like CSIR/UGC NET, ICMR or GATE with little modification included.

With the number of higher education institutions in India increasing rapidly, maybe it is time for us also to think on the line for a common test for Ph.D. student selection?

Also see a related article in Current Science

http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/103/01/0029.pdf

A big sigh of relief and a sense of satisfaction

2012-05-01T00:00:00+05:30

My journey until now has been eventful, challenging and a big learning experience. I shared my opinion earlier about the teaching assignment I am involved in and kind of challenges it posed. The month of April brought the end of the semester and the climax to teaching in the form of exams and the performance of the students.

Of course I enjoyed the entire semester and if teaching during the semester was challenging then conducting the exams and viva voce as well as correcting the answer sheets and submitting grades in a timely manner are part of the April Pandora box. So, end of April brought a big sigh of relief from all responsibilities that were associated with the course and duly dealt with during the semester. If an improvement in student’s performances is evident when compared to their mid semester performances, it adds a huge sense of achievement and satisfaction to this toiling.

The students in my opinion are overburdened with coursework, labs, assignments and class quizzes. All this in their schedule at the beginning of the month, sets the tone for the end semester exams that follows even before students have a chance to blink. I am not in, with the opinion of burdening students with all the above but yet we do need a scale to figure out how much the students have learnt in the class.

Early in the month, I conducted a quiz related to what was being taught in the class. Questions were posed with the idea that students should apply their thoughts before they answer. The response from the class was very enthusiastic. I observed an interesting change. The students were being analytical and interested in explaining and defending their viewpoint. As a teacher, this was really rewarding, not only had the students understood what was being taught but also assimilated it in a way so as to be able to analyze and logically explain things.

You might remember, my mentioning in one of the earlier blogs, the diversity my class with regard to subject inclination is quite different. That was a probing time when I was trying to strike a balance between different levels of understanding in the class. My effort was to reach to as many students as possible and to motivate them. It was apparent during the quiz, that my strategy is paying off, and the students do seem interested in the subject and spend sometime understanding and thinking logically about problems, theories and solutions. I hope this inner urge/motivation to learn and be curious would continue and only increase as they move from one semester to other. Each student irrespective of his/her majors ends up learning something new by the end of the course. I am looking forward to the end of the semester exams as that would be the acid test for my teaching and instruction.

In the end, it is a big sigh of relief for me that course contents were covered in a manner that was not overwhelming to students and they got to learn and understand something new in a step wise and logical manner. It also brings along the time to shift focus and gears from teaching to research until the new semester begins in July. Since all responsibilities associated with course were dealt earnestly and the outcome of this effort is evident in class and hopefully in their end semester exam. It fills me with a sense of satisfaction that I could achieve a significant fraction of progress from the class when compared to what I hoped for.

Teaching and research: walking the tight rope

2012-03-06T00:00:00+05:30

The two important pillars of science are teaching and research, one feeding on the other in a cyclic manner. Teaching and research require different sets of skills and striking a justifiable balance between the two is an arduous task. The teaching component of science is more challenging as it inherently involves educating curious minds while keeping the topics interesting enough to captivate their attention. Consequently teaching and educating should be a coupled process but in most cases the difference between the two isn’t clear nor is it well understood. In my opinion, if teaching is unidirectional passage of information then analysis and integration in bidirectional modes is education.

Through a PhD, and then a postdoc, we are trained as scientists and researchers, to think logically, analyze experimental results, design experiments to test hypothesis, but the need to develop one’s skill to teach is sorely forgotten. More importantly, as researchers, we have relatively less understanding of what it takes to be in a teaching institute and do research. To most of us trained in science, research is a natural progression, but educating the next generation is a totally different ball game as I discovered once I teaching.

I got initiated into teaching through a course on Cellular organization. The course is what might be referred to as a Bio101 in the United States, and is designed to give a background about a Cell, its organization and functions performed by each component within. Though straightforward, what makes it a bit hard is the fact that the class comprises of not just biology majors but also those majoring in other sciences – physics or Mathematics who have no previous background in biology. These students do not understand a Cell, let alone ribosomes or transcription. As I teach, the realization has dawned on me, that I am myself a student in the process of learning to teach. Each student is different as is each class, and one needs to constantly change and innovate to convey key concepts to the students effectively. The most challenging part of this particular course is to keep each topic interesting for those who have a background while basic and simple for those without prior knowledge.

I have personally taken much help from various websites that have pictorial and animated representation of basic biology. My experience is that students tend to understand more from the class when the gist of the topic is summarized by a short audio-visual animation. It reemphasizes key information/concepts, which then get ingrained in their minds. Simple experiments might work the same way though this is something I still have to try.

As I mentioned earlier educating is bidirectional, hence an enthusiastic involvement of students surely helps the cause. At present it often seems much of the teaching I do is instructional, with hardly any student participation. When, I do get the students excited about a particular topic and start a discussion in the class it is exhilarating for me as well as gratifying. However, engaging the students I realized much harder to do than analyzing and designing ones experiments. That is one aspect of teaching that requires lot more time than what we think before we embark on any teaching.

Being a researcher at the beginning of my scientific career, it is important to focus on research as well. If you focus on your research then teaching quality is compromised and if you devote more time on teaching then research suffers. It is hence, a tight rope that I have just begun to walk on but hope to learn soon to do justice to both aspects of science.

National Workshop for Undergraduate Biology Teachers

2012-02-20T00:00:00+05:30

This article was co-authored by Asim Auti

The first National Workshop for Undergraduate Biology Teachers was jointly organized by Abasaheb Garware College and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune from 11 to 14 January, 2012, and was funded by the Department of Science and Technology (Ministry of Science and Technology, Govt. of India) under its INSPIRE program1. The workshop was loosely modeled after the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes (HHMI) supported National Academies Summer Institutes on Undergraduate Education in Biology2, which have been successfully running in the United States for about ten years now3.

The conception and organization of the Pune workshop involved Dr. William Wood (University of Colorado, Boulder) who Chairs the Executive Committee of the National Academies Summer Institutes, Dr. Robin Wright (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis), a member of the same committee, Dr. Teri Balser (University of Florida, Gainesville) who was the Director of the Institute for Cross-College Biology Education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Dr. Anil Kumar Challa (Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), Dr. L S Shashidhara (Coordinator Biology, IISER, Pune), Dr. Milind Watve (IISER, Pune), Dr. K P Mohanan (IISER, Pune), Dr. Maithili Jog (previously at MES Abasaheb Garware College, Pune; currently at Symbiosis International University, Pune) and Mr. Asim Auti (MES Abasaheb Garware College, Pune).

The larger goal of the workshop was to create a national initiative to transform biology education at the B.Sc. level in University affiliated colleges by improving classroom teaching & learning. One of the expressed aims of the workshop was to nurture a new generation of teachers by introducing them to a scientific approach to teaching that reflects the way active scientists/researchers function. The workshop was intended to bring teachers across sub-disciplines in biology, and therefore focused more on orienting teachers towards inquiry based teaching in classrooms and laboratories; help teachers in developing students’ capacity to build a scientific temper and to actively engage in science; discuss the latest and efficient methods of teaching; encourage teachers to devise their own tools and modules for their students.

A workshop announcement was sent out to several small colleges across India in November 2011 and attracted over 250 applications. The applicants were asked to write a short teaching statement along with their academic interests, based on which a final group of 50 teachers was selected, representing 12 States and 28 cities. The group comprised both new and experienced teachers who teach courses in traditional subjects like botany and zoology, and ‘modern’ subjects like biochemistry, molecular biology and biotechnology.

Dr. Mohanan initiated a few pre-workshop activities on an online discussion forum for the participants. The main goals of these activities were to help the participants get familiar with each other and engage them with a set of tasks that enable them to think about different aspects of education. Most participants enthusiastically took part in these pre-workshop activities.

The workshop began on 11 January, in the afternoon, with informal introductions followed by group interactions. The first day ended with a session on how to encourage critical thinking among students was conducted by Dr. Mohanan.

Day two of the workshop was embedded into an ongoing INSPIRE workshop for XI standard students from various schools in and around Pune with the active guidance of Dr L S Shashidhara. A series of lectures by Dr. T. Ramasami (Secretary, DST, India), Dr. Michael Bishop (Nobel Laureate, University of California, San Francisco, USA), Dr. Lalita Ramakrishnan (University of Washington, Seattle), Dr. Ron Vale (University of California, San Francisco, USA), and Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan (Nobel Laureate, Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Medical Research Council, Cambridge, UK) were moderated by Dr L S Shashidhara (Coordinator Biology, IISER). Day two ended with a talk by Dr. Milind Watve about his ‘Katta’4 method of motivating students to think creatively in science.

Day three started with a session on “Aligning Educational Goals and Educational Means” (Mohanan) followed by sessions on Backward Design (Wood), Assessments (Wright) and Active Learning (Balser). Two short presentations on student projects were made at the end of the formal sessions. Four students from Garware College presented their experiences with an extra-curriculuar book reading project. Dr.Dona Joseph (Vivekananda College, Mumbai) showcased a humorous skit (by playing a recorded video) on microbial diversity she developed for students.

‘N-Game’, a board game to introduce and engage players in the nitrogen cycle was introduced by Dr.Balser5. The workshop participants played the game late into the night. As stated by one of the groups, “the N-game was complex and challenging, but it was also very enjoyable and educational; each of us learned several nuances about the Nitrogen cycle.”

The last day began with a presentation on Clickers (Wood) as a tool to engage students in large classrooms and for effective formative assessment. The rest of the morning was spent in preparations for presentations by participants. The final, post-lunch, session was the grand finale when the participants presented their ‘Teachable Units’ that they progressively developed in teams, from Day 1 of the workshop. Through discussions, each group chose a learning goal/outcome/objective based on a key concept in biology, created an active learning strategy to teach that concept and came up with an assessment tool to find out if the goal/outcome/objective was reached. Each presentation ended with questions from the rest of the groups. The formal sessions were closed with these presentations.

Informal feedback from the participants was solicited as part of the valedictory session. The participants unanimously expressed that the workshop was an important event that created a networking opportunity allowing interactions between undergraduate biology teachers from different parts of the country, discussions on important issues in undergraduate biology education, and exposure to a variety of new perspectives in teaching. There was an overwhelming support to organize future ‘National Workshops’ every year.

The enthusiasm, energy and commitment of many undergraduate biology teachers provided the necessary impetus to make the first National Workshop happen. The expressed need and distinct value of this first workshop in the professional development of college teachers is the principal motivation to make the National Workshops the platform for dialogue and action towards improving undergraduate biology education in India.

References:

[1] Funds for international travel were raised from private sources in the United States of America..

[2] http://www.academiessummerinstitute.org/

[3] Pfund et al. (2009) Science Vol. 324 no. 5926 pp. 470-471

[4] The announcement could not be sent to every small college in India since there is no comprehensive and formal database of the 26000 colleges. A proposal to connect biology teachers from all these colleges has been made and modest efforts are in progress, as mentioned by Dr. MC Arunan (http://www.indiabioscience.org/node/175).

[5] The ‘Science Katta’ at Pune: catching them young: http://indiabioscience.org/node/24

[6] http://thengame.org/