Re-evaluation of the MMG 302 lab manual

After several semesters of being a TA for MMG 302 I decided it was time to assist Dr. Marsh in the re-evaluation of the course materials that he provides to the students.  He agreed that it was well-past due and thus we embarked on a semester-long journey.  

As the weeks went on I would take notes on the sections of the lab manual which confused students due to it being poorly worded or simply inaccurate within the current iteration of the course.  My purpose was to smooth out these sections so the students wouldn't have to worry about whether following the manual's instructions would lead them astray.  While small changes always manage to creep into lab courses (merely due to science not always being "an exact science"), it should not be the norm.  

In addition to the small changes such as mis-numbering, odd phrasing, and the occasional change in experimental parameters, there were several aspects which I was more than adamant about changing:

• One main point was that I hoped to change the organization of the experiments within the lab manual to be more congruous with the activities performed in lab.  At the start of most class periods we would have to tell students to begin their day with the 2nd or 3rd experiment presented within the lab manual.  For most students this was a non-issue, but I know that some students enter the lab with a specific 'game plan' and the disruption caused by changing things up like this threw them off.  So, while not an essential change - I thought it was a valuable one. 

• The inclusion of several conclusion questions to expand upon new experiments that were added to the manual was another main focus.  Several new experiments had been added to the course in previous years but questions and conclusions about them had not.  As such, students would receive 'free' points for doing the required tasks, but were not forced (read encouraged) to interpret the data.  In my mind this was a complete waste of both class time and resources.  So, I suggested a few conclusion questions and Dr. Marsh agreed that they were worthy of inclusion in the manual.  Now students will need to demonstrate an understanding of biofilm formation and the growth of mixed cultures on selective media - take that free points!  

• The main lesson that I learned from all of this, however, is to never get too attached to your materials.  Things that are out-dated or dysfunctional should not be kept around.  They don't work for a reason - and unless you figure out what that reason is and fix it, they are doing a disservice to your student.  There were large sections of the manual which students had not touched (or read) for years and therefore there is no reason to make students pay for and cart them around.  I encouraged Dr. Marsh to remove the sections and he agreed that most were unimportant (in terms of the course, of course) at this point in time.  He suggested leaving several in as valuable microbiological techniques which I was unable to argue against.  Regardless, I believe the manual next year will be much slimmer and valuable for the students.  

We shall see how these changes affect the students during the summer semester of 2013 as Dr. Marsh will roll out the new iteration of the manual then.  It is unlikely that it will be perfect, as things seldom are, but I hope that it will lead to a smoother run-through of the course.

Closing question:  Does anyone have something atypical that they like to put into their laboratory materials to help their students with comprehension?

ISE 870 - Teaching College Science (course)

ISE 870 is a course taught by the oh so knowledgeable Dr. Joyce Parker.  It is designed to provide postgraduate students with a bit of a crash-course in both learning and teaching.  This is a necessary course for the completion of my Certificate of College Teaching, yet I was excited to take the course as I have a large issue with the amount of teaching training most college professors have to start.

Dr. Parker, to start, has a massive pile of teaching experience.  It is now my understanding that she has taught for many years, researched both teaching and learning mechanisms, and now appears to focus on helping others become effective teachers.  I think this is a great thing for any university to have, and someone like Dr. Parker is a necessary component of it.  (To note, Joyce will be reading through this blog to make sure I'm passable in terms of the course, but it has no effect on the components of this post - I promise.)  PhD candidates are very good at extracting information from periodicals and books, but having someone with real experience is always more beneficial.  A quizzical mind can only grow when there are the resources to support it.

Anyways, the course opens with a description of the syllabus and it ties into a discussion of what makes up a good syllabus vs. a passable one.  The most interesting bit of this was that there was a focus on the "course objectives" which is the "What will the students be able to do once they complete the course?" Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but as an undergrad I didn't pay attention to these sections at all, I just went straight to the grading policy, exam dates, and course schedule.  But,  I am not all students and I need to make materials accessible to every type of students.  I've decided that these objectives are much more helpful in terms of the course schedule - what will you be able to do with the materials presented within a single class period or section of the course.

The next few weeks opened up into piles of reading from old dudes about the philosophy of learning and cognition.  The readings were exhaustively bland and lofty but during class period Dr. Parker helped us distill the essence of it all.  We talked through Bloom's Taxonomy Ladder (see the image to the right from the linked site for a quick synopsis) and other ways of understanding how people actually learn, access, and apply materials.   Bloom's ladder was the most applicable of all these, as I have had similar thoughts throughout my teaching experiences.  Many times students are able to define a term or understand a concept but the application of these ideas to a similar problem is lacking.  As you go up the ladder the ideas become more abstract, more theoretical, and much more valuable.  Proceeding up allows you to not only understand the exact problem/idea, but the problem itself becomes a foundation and thus can provide the framework by which you can understand new concepts.  While I recommend every professor to understand these concepts - I'd say stick to the cliff-notes as the primary articles can be a bit of a bore.

Other course requirements for ISE 870 are the creation of several "interactive learning" lectures - which I enjoy a lot.  These sway away from the typical "I will throw information at you all class and it's your job to understand it later."  Interactive lectures rely on the interaction between the professor and the student along with a lot of group work between students. This allows the instructor to provide foundation concepts and then force students to 'climb the ladder' and reach those higher states of understanding.  As students work through the materials in class they can bounce ideas off of the professor and their classmates and it leads to a much more entertaining and valuable understanding of the materials presented.  I am still (quite) worried about the application of this teaching method in majors courses as you simply cannot cover as much material.  But, I know that a solid understanding of main concepts leads to easier assimilation of new and more specific information.  All in all, I'm definitely going to play with this when (if?) I get a teaching position that permits me such freedom.

Finally, the last few weeks roll around and working with a partner (which was a learning experience in and of itself) I was to create a detailed course syllabus, a 30-minute interactive lecture, and a lesson plan for a 50 minute course.  My partner ended up being someone who I had worked with previously (in Dr. Alison Cupples' lab) who is a member of the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) department.  I was interested in creating an Environmental Microbiology course, and she had a similar idea.  What we ended up creating was a course in microbiology designed for these CEE students.  The interactive lecture went well, the lesson plan wasn't an issue, yet the syllabus came together only after many long discussions.

We wanted to create a course where the microbiology was a focus but we didn't want the students to get slogged down with the details.  I mean, if I was a CEE student forced to take a micro class I would be sitting there saying "yeah yeah, when am I going to use this?"  But, microbial processes in the environment affect everything!  This is what we decided to convey to the students, that the microbiology (that I would supply) is directly applicable to the Civil Engineering aspects (that my partner would supply).  Weekly lectures would begin with either the CE problem followed by the micro aspect, or vice versa.  This way students can get a CE framework by which to assess the value and necessity of the microbes in the process.  I believe that it all turned out nicely and working through this with someone with ulterior motives (she wanted to include so many CEE materials) was amazing. We found ourselves fighting over what should be cut from each of our materials to leave room for the other.  I can only imagine this happening during the creation of a real course.

At the end of this class I feel that I am much more prepared to create my own course and (hopefully) survive my first semester.  I do know that this is a naive assumption, that nothing will work as I planned and everything will be a relative disaster.  But, I hope that the disaster will be in my own mind and that my first students will fare better now than they would have without me undertaking such a teaching bootcamp.


Closing question:  Any professors out there who took a similar class?  Did it help? Also, how disastrous was your first teaching semester?

MMG 302 - Dilutions Worksheet

In MMG 302 students are required to use basic mathematics to go through both dilutions of bacteria and solutions throughout the semester.  Much to my chagrin, this proves to be a difficult task.  Most students merely memorize the formulas provided and never take the time to understand the steps (I assume this is a common problem in math courses everywhere).  

I had first created and used this worksheet while teaching BS 171 and I altered and applied it to the materials within this class.  I sent it out to the students class-wide and those who took the time to go through it said it helped them a lot.  After going through my teaching class (ISE 870) I learned why this worksheet is so effective.  I did not rely on a single formulaic example, and by 'mixing it up' the students are forced to understand the concepts instead of merely the way to solve a single problem.  

In addition I sent out an "answer key" containing not only the answers to the problems but the method(s) by which I solved them.  I assumed that this would help the students more than simply providing the answers.  Thus, if their answer was wrong they could go through the steps I provided and see where there mistake lies.

I have included the worksheet below.

Closing question:  Does anyone have any suggestions on alternative questions that would help them open their minds and truly understand what's going on?

Spring 2013 - MMG302 Research Option

In collaboration with Dr. Marsh from Michigan State University's Microbiology and Molecular Genetics program I have developed an advanced research option for his Introductory Microbiology laboratory course.

My favorite source of metal contamination

Previously, all students in the course proceed through an isolation procedure from various soil sources around Michigan State's expansive campus.  These sites range from some of our well-tended gardens, the heavy-metal contaminated soil surrounding our historic rock (AKA "THE Rock")
, the flood plains surrounding the Red Cedar River, and even bioreactors for the degradation of the manure from our cattle and porcine stock.  While students proceed to examine the phylogeny and physiology of the organisms from these sites, little is done to connect their lifestyles and properties to their isolation sites.  Thus, the majority of students reach a sufficient yet rather shallow understanding of their isolates.

While, as in most courses, the majority of students are fine with such a basic understanding, some students have always desired more.  Yet, with the current setup of the course, a deeper understanding was unattainable.  Why do we see different populations at each site?  Could there be deeper similarities or differences between the sites that we cannot see with only phylogenetics and physiological tests?  Are the same isolates (based on 16S sequencing) from different sites truly the same isolate?  So many interesting questions that we were simply unable to answer.

Here's where the magic started.  Dr. Marsh was somehow able to convince our ever-generous departmental chair, Dr. Walter Esselman, to provide substantial additional funding to permit the development of an advanced-track within the MMG 302 course during the spring semester of 2012-2013.  Concurrently with this fantastic news I had decided without-a-doubt that teaching was for me and continued the pursuit of improving my teaching skills (don't get me started on the incompetencies of training in the sciences...).  The Certificate in College Teaching at MSU (brought to you by the College of Natural Science) requires a "Mentored Teaching Experience" in which the trainee (myself) undergoes a semester-long project with a senior teaching faculty (Dr. Marsh).  So, the stars had aligned...now how do we move on from here?

Dr. Marsh had the idea (based on previous results) that since we typically see an assorted variety of of Psuedomonads come back from student isolations, perhaps these organisms would make a solid focus for our research option students.  Our initial design was to permit students (in their regularly scheduled lab time) to plate on selective media which will up the number of Pseudomonads present and kill off almost everything else.  These isolates could come from a few different sites including the gardens, floodplain, and the bioreactors.  As most livestock is raised in the presence of antibiotics our first task for the students was to assess the antibiotic sensitivities of their isolates to a slew of different compounds.  Next, we would direct them to examine (using genomic DNA preparations and PCR) the prevalence of antibiotic resistance, pathogenicity, and other genes (such as levulinic acid degradation studies here at MSU by Dr. Bagdasarian) in their isolates.  We hoped that our students would see some sites with increased amounts of these factors and be able to draw conclusions from there.  We decided this was a reasonable amount of work for our first go at a research option and that it would provide our students with a decent story to regale their parents of upon their return home for the summer.

So, my first lesson in curriculum development is that proper planning necessitates a balance of being both under- and overzealous.  While the students signed up knowing the research option would be additional work, some of their normally scheduled lab periods were far too busy with the addition of the research option material.  Lesson #2:  simply because you can easily complete a task within the designated time does not mean the students can.  Next time the research option is provided as an option I will host a "free period" in which any research option student can come and finish up materials they were unable to finish during their normal class period.

Regardless of this fact, we were able to accomplish a large amount of the materials that we had hoped to.  Dr. Marsh and I hosted interactive nighttime labs where the students successfully assessed the antibiotic sensitivities of their isolates, prepared genomic DNA, and performed PCR analysis to determine whether their isolates contained two separate pathogenicity genes.  While we did not get through all of the material we had hoped to, it was a successful first attempt.

I am currently awaiting the completion of the student experiments and excited to see the depth of knowledge the students demonstrate when it comes to analyzing their data.  I plan on assisting Dr. Marsh again in the following semesters with similar projects to gain experience and facilitate the development of what I deem to be a valuable asset to students interested in life in the sciences.

Look for an update soon on the responses I get from my students and my assessment of whether they "get it".