Building Bridges
Science Education at Bryn Mawr College

Tri-College Science Teaching Symposium
May 8, 2001
Bryn Mawr College
 
   

 

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Teaching Matters

SCIENCE TEACHING IN THE TRI-COLLEGE COMMUNITY

Quantitative Skills Tutorial

      

Small Group Discussion
Issues of Breadth vs. Depth and Content vs. Process

Facilitated by Sara Hiebert, Department of Biology, Swarthmore College

 

  • Depth vs. breadth: teaching to expectations
    • Expectations come from ourselves as well as from students and outside sources
      • Students expect introductory courses to "cover" the field
      • Students may expect courses to prepare them for GREs or MCATs
      • Teachers feel pressure to prepare students for more advanced courses, either from themselves or from their colleagues
      • This expectation has trickled down even to the secondary school level
    • Questions and concerns:
      • Do content-driven courses promote lack of drive on the part of students to seek knowledge?
      • Is content really what prepares students for more advanced courses? Or are problem-solving skills really the important component, with content secondary?
      • One participant observed that he included certain material in the first of a series of chemistry courses so that students would be familiar with it when they encountered the same material in a higher level course, but that students in the higher level course frequently acted as if they had never been exposed to this material before. He thus questioned whether the breadth of the first course actually accomplished the goal of better preparing students for higher level courses.
      • One participant commented that many of us are teaching to perceived expectations of other courses and other teachers, and that breaking this cycle is difficult, especially for an individual teacher surrounded by a group of peers who continue to exert and work under these expectations. Perhaps we should all agree to remove these expectations at once, and all take the plunge toward greater depth together?

       

  • Covering less
    • Some participants reported that they have been steadily reducing the content of their courses over the years
    • The course syllabus establishes student expectations for breadth of coverage. One participant leaves several lecture slots each semester as subject TBA. These class times can be used as "overflow" when current developments in a field make it desirable to spend more time on a topic than originally planned for in the syllabus. They can also be used to introduce additional topics if desired, but if students haven’t seen these additional topics on the syllabus, they won’t feel "cheated" if the course doesn’t include them.
    • In contrast to some other fields, current thinking in physics pedagogy exerts pressure to limit content and cover less
    • Questions and concerns:
      • How broad is too broad?
      • How can we assess the appropriateness of depth/breadth in a particular course?

       

  • Challenges of introductory (breadth) courses
    • Students have a wide variety of backgrounds and needs
    • Some solutions
      • Evaluation by written papers rather than by traditional examinations
      • Grade gauged by % improvement rather than by absolute score
      • Weekly assignments allow early assessment of problem areas so that corrective measures may be taken

     

  • Active learning: a means of achieving greater depth
    • Active learning, because it is based on personal motivation, is the counterpart of content-driven learning
    • The design of a course can motivate students to want to get more out of a course
    • Some practical suggestions for promoting active learning
      • Weekly assignments
      • Design course so that students can use the course to achieve self-determined goals
      • Ask students to write summaries of required text reading
      • Ask students write critiques of figures in their required reading
      • Ask students to talk about what ideas or examples really "grabbed" them in the required reading