Assessing the Efficacy of Whether a Graphing Activity in Which Students Connect Biological Concepts to Themselves in a Biology of Women Course Improves Student

Learning and Knowledge RetentionCynthia A. DeBoy

Biology of Women is a capstone course for majors and non-majors designed to bridge GenEd courses with major courses at the all-women’s college within Trinity Washington University. For this course, a pilot study was conducted to investigate whether learning outcomes improve when students participate in an activity in which they connect concepts to themselves. In Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses, Dee Fink explains that a “taxonomy of significant learning“ includes “caring, human dimension, and integration.” My hypothesis is that incorporating these components into an activity in which students create a graph based on data they collect from themselves will improve learning about hormonal regulation of the reproductive cycle. For this activity, students first predicted physiological effects from existing graphs of abnormal hormone levels. Students graphed their own basal body temperatures throughout their reproductive cycles and graphically predicted accompanying physiological changes. The efficacy of this activity was measured by averaging the percentage of students correctly answering relevant questions after the topic was introduced by lecture (48%), after the activity (84%; p<.05), and in the final quiz (84%). In comparison, for an objective on diseases of women taught with a combination of lecture, case study, and discussion, averages of 86% and 89% of students correctly answered questions on in-semester and final quizzes, respectively. In contrast, when pedagogy included only lecture for a genetics objective, the percentage of students answering a question correctly on an in-semester quiz, 71%, decreased to 29% on the final quiz. In conclusion, after completing the graphing activity, the average percentage of students correctly answering questions about reproductive cycle hormones significantly increased. This suggests the activity was effective, although not more than other engaging pedagogies encouraging active learning. Comparison of data from lecture-only vs. graphing self-data pedagogies shows that the latter may improve retention of knowledge.

Hypothesis:

If students create a graph based on data they collect from themselves they will demonstrate greater understanding of hormonal regulation of the reproductive cycle.

• Learning outcomes for hormone regulation of the reproductive cycle improved after students created graphs with data from themselves.

• Students retain knowledge longer after creating graphs with data from themselves than when lecture is used alone.

• Learning outcomes after students create graphs from data from themselves are similar to when students engage in debate and case studies.

• Integrating concepts so that they become relevant to students improves student learning and knowledge retention.

Do students demonstrate greater understanding of hormone regulation of the reproductive cycle after they

create a graph with data from themselves?

Do students demonstrate and retain an understanding of risk factors and diseases affecting women when

lecture, case study, and debate are used as pedagogy?

Purpose:

To determine if students demonstrate greater understanding of biological concepts when they are asked to connect the concepts to themselves

Fifteen students were given short response quizzes on reproductive hormones after a lecture, again after completing the graphing activities, and then at the end of the semester. Quiz questions related to reproductive hormones were ranked for level of cognitive thinking (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). The average levels for the first vs. final quizzes were 1.5 and 2, respectively. The percentages of students correctly answering each question related to an objective were averaged.

Assessment methods: Anderson, L.W. & Krathwohl, D.R. (Eds.) (2001). A taxonomy for Learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Addison Wesley Longman.

De Souza, M.J. High prevalence of subtle and severe menstrual disturbances in exercising women: confirmation using daily hormone measures. Human Reproduction, Vol.25, No.2 pp. 491–503, 2010.

Fink, D. (2003). Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.

Shuster, M and Peterson, K, (2007) Breast Cancer Risk: Using Real Medical Histories to Rank Genetic and Environmental Influences. The National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, University at Buffalo, State University of NY. http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/teaching

METHODS

Figure 2. Percentage of students correctly answering a selected question about genetics on a quiz after a lecture and on the final quiz. Note: Average percent of students correctly answering questions about genetics on the quiz after the lecture was 70% . Error bars are STD DEV.

Graphing Activities:Compare hormone levels throughout normal and aberrant reproductive cycles. Students were given data showing hormone levels within a reproductive cycle from an article written by DeSouza (2010). Students worked in groups to predict symptoms that would result form abnormal hormone levels by comparing the graphs to normal cycles.

Create your own basal temperature graph and overlay expected levels of hormones. Students were asked to record their own basal temperature for an entire reproductive cycle. They used this data to create a graph in which they indicated where ovulation was likely to occur and drew expected relative changes in luteinizing hormone, follicular stimulating hormone, estrogen, and progesterone. They also indicated changes that would occur within the follicles and uterine lining during each phase.

Figure 1. Average Percent of students correctly answering questions related to hormone regulation of the reproductive cycle. * p <.05, Error bars represent STD DEV.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION RESULTS CONCLUSIONS

RESULTSDo students demonstrate and retain an understanding of

a concept in genetics when lecture is used alone?

Figure 3. Average percentage of students correctly answering questions about diseases and risk factors during a semester quiz and a final quiz.

References:

Trinity Washington University125 Michigan Avenue, NE

Washington, DC 20017(202) 884-9257(office)deboyc@trinitydc.edu

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Other Pedagogy used for comparison:Lecture: PowerPoint presentations were used to introduce selected concepts to students. Students were asked questions throughout the presentation.

Debate: Students read articles about HPV. Working in groups, they took on roles to debate whether HPV vaccine should be mandatory.

Case Study: A breast cancer case study (Shuster, M and Peterson, K, 2007) was used to introduce risk factors for breast cancer.