By Rebecca Barnes
Introduction
Rebecca Barnes, a senior University teacher who teaches molecular biology topics and general skills to students from across the School of Biosciences, reports on her experiences in a recent Elevate hub of revamping a popular Bioscence module.
Background
Numerical skills are essential in all Science subjects; however, in the ex-Molecular Biology and Biotechnology Department there were some students every year who had not done A-level maths and lacked confidence performing lab calculations and handling data. So in 2014 we introduced MBB110, 'Maths for Molecular Bioscience', to support these students.
MBB110 is a popular, optional, Semester 1 module designed and coordinated by me, covering material such as molarity, probability, and the use of logarithms. It’s taught using a 'flipped classroom' methodology: every week students watch some videos, then complete a worksheet, attend an in-person workshop, and finally take a short online quiz.
In 21-22 we combined into the School of Biosciences, welcoming students from the Biomedical Science and Organisms and Environment units of the School as well as Molecular Bioscience. This prompted me to re-evaluate the module’s content and presentation, concentrating on the following areas:
Content: An informal survey showed that students thought that the amount of work and difficulty of the module were about right. For some of the material they did not see the relevance to their degree; however, staff from across the School agreed that these topics were important to cover. It’s my job to convince students of the importance by including more biology-specific examples throughout the teaching materials and the questions. I have also made some other tweaks and rearrangements to the order of the topics.
Video accessibility: I worked on this with Matty Phillips, a Digital Learning Officer in APSD whose work focuses on educational video, at a digital retreat run by Elevate this spring. Previous videos were made by writing on a blank OneNote page with a stylus, recorded by Camtasia screencasting software; the finished product produces an A4 handwritten document that could be saved as a pdf. We decided that a lot of what I was already doing was good - or at least good enough!
With about 100 videos to make, we prioritised making sure that I could continue without Matty’s expert skills; using simple methods will allow me to concentrate on the content rather than technical aspects. We put together a procedure and templates to ensure that the videos are:
- Bite-sized. I kept my principle from previous years that no video should be over ~10 minutes.
- Applied. This year I added simple “comprehension check” questions after every video, with detailed worked answers, relating the video content directly to possible applications.
- Engaging. We agreed that handwritten resources are best firstly because they have an informal feel; secondly because the act of writing forces one to slow down while explaining; and thirdly because of the practical concern that maths notation is tricky to reproduce in a typed document. In the new videos I’ve seeded the document with some pre-written sections, when longer sentences such as definitions are needed. We decided to carry on using OneNote rather than Photoshop or another more advanced tool.
- Legible. We worked out a system where just a part of the page was visible at once. The larger writing is easier to read, especially if you are watching on your phone; writing some sections pre-recording lets me do it more slowly and carefully.
- Audible. The Rode “Podcaster” mic I already had works well.
- Reliably captioned. Automatically-generated Kaltura captions are relatively accurate, at least with my accent! Downloading the caption file to edit and re-upload can be done quite straightforwardly.
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| Here is what the final A4 product of a video looks like. Only one quarter in visible on the screen at a time. Some text, such as the red titles and underlined question prompts, were written before the screen capture. |
Worksheets. Students asked for more practice questions. The medium-term plan is to generate a question bank using Numbas, which is being used elsewhere in the Faculty. However, this year I am concentrating on making new video resources.
Workshops. Increasing the amount of group work during these sessions will introduce students to each other at the start of Level 1, as well as allowing us to tackle more complex material building on the worksheets. At the end of the session there will be time for students to get individual support from teaching staff.
Advice and support at the Elevate retreat really got this project kick-started. I’m now spending my summer making the new resources, ready for 22-23. I’d be very happy to speak to anyone interested in the nitty gritty, just send me an email!