Mississippi State University
Course Title: Biology (Plants and Humans; Animal)
Contact: Nancy Reichert
Mississippi State University (MSU) plans to redesign two of MSU’s most popular non-major science courses, Plants and Humans Biology and Animal Biology. These core, natural science courses satisfy non-majors science requirements for lecture and laboratory credits. The traditional courses enroll ~400 students annually. Two conventional lectures per week are delivered in each course primarily through PowerPoint presentations. Students are also required to attend one two-hour wet lab each week that includes simple exercises and videos.
Both courses face resource and academic problems. MSU is unable to schedule a sufficient number of sections to meet high student demand, thus creating an enrollment bottleneck. Additional wet lab space and large lecture halls are not available, and there is a lack of resources to hire additional instructors. In addition to the resource issues, the limited interactive learning opportunities in both courses do not teach students how to be lifelong learners of biology and science.
MSU will redesign both courses using the Replacement Model. The number of lectures will be reduced from two to one where students will participate in active learning exercises such as group discussions and case studies. Students will work online individually with learning modules and exercises. Online quizzes will be graded automatically, providing immediate feedback. The wet labs will be converted to virtual labs in an open-schedule, emporium-style computer lab staffed by graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) to assist the students.
The interactive, student-centered redesigned courses will enhance the quality of the students’ learning experiences. Virtual laboratories will expose students to a wide variety of simulations and real life situations to broaden their views of biology. They will increase the students’ exposure to topics and experiments that would be difficult, if not impossible, to cover in wet lab settings. The quality of student life will be enhanced by flexibility scheduling, allowing students to fit laboratory time into their weekly schedules as they desire. The university will also benefit by no longer having to schedule labs around discrete two-hour time blocks necessary for the traditional courses.
The impact of the course redesign on student learning outcomes will be assessed by comparing baseline performance data from traditional courses with redesigned course data. Key exam questions covering course learning outcomes (common content items) will be embedded into traditional and redesigned courses for comparison. Course grades will also be compared using common criteria, and pre- and post-tests will be administered. Students’ attitudes will be measured using the Science Attitude Inventory (SAI II).
The cost of instruction for both courses will be lower. The reduced class meeting time will enable each faculty member to teach two sections rather than one and still keep the same teaching load. Enrollment can be nearly doubled to ~750 per year for each course, eliminating the bottleneck and meeting student demand. The number of GTAs will increase from two to four each term for Plants and Humans and from three to four each term for Animal Biology. Lab computers will be increased from 24 to 55 to support the virtual labs and increased enrollment. These actions will decrease the cost-per-student for Plants and Humans from $127 to $99, a 22% savings. The cost-per-student for Animal Biology will be reduced from $164 to $100, a 39% savings. These savings will be used by the Biological Science Department to strengthen the department’s new internal research initiative, BURP (Biology Undergraduate Research Program).
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