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Development of a Journal Review Course Module in Biology Practical Suggestions 1. Contact information of Project Leaders
Among the challenges we face as educators in today’s increasingly technical world are to learn not only how technology will change the ways we teach and learn, but also how best to use information technology to enhance learning by our students. We all realize that we are at the beginning of an information revolution that has been made possible by computer technology. This is making unprecedented amounts of information in all fields of scholarship available in digital format to scholars, students, and the general public upon demand. But it is only information that is being made available, not knowledge. Do we always know how to use the new technology in our classrooms to better turn information into knowledge? The answer is obviously no. It is up to us as faculty to learn how to use this enhanced access to information to create a more effective learning environment, to promote scholarship, and to invigorate the pursuit of knowledge. Easy and immediate access to vast amounts of information changes the questions that one can ask and then answer. But because of such enhanced access, information overload for faculty and students is a major problem. It is up to the faculty and other support staff to help students learn to find and evaluate appropriate and legitimate electronic learning resources and overcome the distractions that easy and immediate access can cause. An important aspect of information fluency is to improve students’ abilities to identify and use bibliographic materials in the practice of scholarly pursuits. The students’ fluency will be enhanced by coaxing out of each article references and insights that may be advanced through subsequent application of more focused searching. Their discriminating skills will be sharpened through this process, leading to improved critical thinking abilities. We propose that students’ information fluency will be accomplished more readily when tied to the knowledge processes within a particular discipline. The same immersion should then be possible with any subject or assignment. Thus, we feel that the enhanced use of
information technology in the classroom
is inevitable - and desirable, if used correctly. The
new electronic technologies can all provide
students with greater involvement in the process
of learning. These kinds of activities
are wonderful additions to the
learning process. The students
can study additional information, use additional
resources, and be engaged in off campus
activities (e.g., research and internships),
all of which can enhance their education.. The purpose of this course module is to familiarize students with scientific literature in the area of animal physiology (or any discipline), and to provide you with experience in reading and interpreting primary scientific literature. Specifically we will help students learn to find and evaluate appropriate and legitimate electronic learning resources, and most importantly will aid in the development of critical thinking skills in our students as they learn new ways to analyze information, to discuss its significance, and to present conclusions effectively and concisely. 3. Organization and Timing:
Things to Consider A training session on the use of the library bibliographic databases and on the use of the Blackboard course management system needs to be conducted at the beginning of the semester, preferably in the first week of the term. This should be done in conjunction with a research librarian. Here you will show the students how to use the electronic resources of the library to find and obtain articles of interest (click here to go to the library search tutorial), and then how to use blackboard.com to post student summaries of the research articles, to allow students to find and read summaries posted by other students enrolled in the class, and to allow students to participate in discussion groups, to name just a few activities you can do with the Blackboard course management system (click here to go to the blackboard.com tutorial). - b. How many articles to review? This will vary depending upon the structure of your specific course, and the term in which it is taught. However, for Animal Physiology journal reviews are assigned in weeks without lecture examinations, resulting in a total of 7 articles to review. We would recommend 6-8 as the ideal number of articles to review. Click here to see an example schedule. The course instructor needs to select these prior to the start of the course. The topics selected should be chosen to complement information you already provide in the course, and to be consistent with the pedagogical goals of your course. Students should be provided with a list of topics in the course syllabus. Click here to see an example. - d. Who selects the articles? Because of timing issues (see below) the course instructor needs to select the first article to review. However, we suggest that subsequent articles be selected by the students. We feel that this gives them a sense of ownership in the process, and also provides them with an opportunity to use the library bibliographic databases, one of the goals of this course module. We suggest that you randomly place students in teams of 3-4, depending upon class size, and then assign each group to find articles of interest relating to the topic for that week. From the list of 3-4 articles generated by the student team you must then select the article to be obtained and subsequently reviewed and discussed by the class. Again, we feel that this can be done with student involvement that makes them feel a part of the process. We suggest the following. First, have each student in the team find an appropriate article and then post the title and abstract of their article to the course site at blackboard.com (click here to go to the blackboard.com tutorial). The course instructor then reviews the selections to ensure that the articles selected fulfill her/his pedagogical and other journal requirements. If an article is unsuitable, the students must re-do their search process until a suitable article is proposed. Once this is done, the course instructor makes the article titles and abstracts available to the entire class on the course site at blackboard.com, at which time all students in the class must then log on to the course site (click here to go to the blackboard.com tutorial), read through the choices, and vote on the article they want to read in its entirety for the coming weeks discussion session. The article receiving the most votes will be selected to read. We recommend that the course instructor obtain the top two selections in the event that the first choice is deemed unsuitable once the course instructor has had the opportunity to read the entire article. Timing of the activities involved in finding, obtaining, reviewing, and finally discussing articles is of critical importance to the success of this course module. The course instructor must lay out a detailed schedule at the start of the class outlining the timing of each of these processes. The key is to leave sufficient time for the students to select articles of interest (5-6 days), to vote on the article to obtain (2-3 days), to allow time for the library to obtain the article using interlibrary loan (1-2 weeks), if it is not directly available, and time for the students to read the article and write a summary of the article (4-5 days) prior to the class discussion of the article. We have found that the time needed to do each of these steps requires that the instructor select the first article to be read, otherwise you can’t begin this aspect of the course until 4 weeks into the semester. Click here to see an example schedule of how to time each of these aspects. While you can use blackboard.com for many course related activities, here we will primarily use it to disseminate information between the students and the course instructor. Students will place article titles and abstracts, along with their written summaries, in the drop-box available within the Blackboard course management system. Files placed in the drop-box can only be viewed by one of the course instructors, allowing the instructor to review files without worries of plagiarism or other problems by the students. The instructor can then organize these files as necessary, and re-post them to folders on the Blackboard course site that all students can access. The Blackboard course management system also allows you to track the usage of the system by your students to ensure that they visit the site as directed. For further details on the use of the Blackboard course management system, click here to go to the blackboard.com tutorial. 4. Article Requirements: Things to Consider The requirements of the articles that are used for this course module can vary with the particular course and instructor. However, we recommend the following. First, we suggest that only actual research papers found in reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journals be used for this type of assignment. This does not include popular science magazines like Scientific American or Discover magazine. Review articles are also inappropriate, as it is generally impossible to write a concise review of a paper that is already reviewing a number of articles on a specific topic. As well, one of the pedagogical goals of this module is to provide students with experience in reading and interpreting primary scientific literature. To do this, articles must also discuss the methods used in the study, not just the results and discussion of experimental findings that would only be found in a review article. Reading articles from the primary literature also aids in the development of critical thinking skills in students more so than would a review article. Secondly, we feel that the articles must be relatively current, as one of the uses of this module is to show them current advances in the field that may not be found in a course textbook. We recommend a window of 4-6 years old as a limitation here. 5. Summary Requirements: Things to Consider The requirements of the summaries written by the students for this course module can vary with the particular course and instructor. However, we recommend the following. First, it is absolutely essential that a very specific requirement of length and formatting be selected by the course instructor with this information added to the course syllabus. Along with this any other specific guidelines that all students must follow must be clearly outlined in the syllabus. If these are not done a fair evaluation of the written summaries by the course instructor will be much more difficult to make. Second, an extremely strict deadline for the turning in of summaries needs to be clearly added to the syllabus. One advantage of the Blackboard course management system is that it allows you to receive documents from the students in a drop-box that students cannot access (other than to place files in the drop-box). Thus, students can turn in assignments that you will grade without the problem of direct plagiarism of other students work. However, we feel that one way for students to improve in their analysis of articles and subsequent writing of their article summary is by seeing work done by yourself and the other students in the class. We thus recommend that you post all written summaries, including one written by the course instructor. These are also valuable for the in-class discussion of the article which we suggest you do on the day following the deadline for written summaries to be turned in for grading. To make summaries available for all students to read, they must be posted soon after the deadline, and thus a strict deadline with severe penalties must be maintained. 6. Discussion
of Journal Article: Things to Consider 7. Specific Example from Animal Physiology The purpose of this portion of the course is to familiarize you with scientific literature in the area of animal physiology, and to provide you with experience in reading and interpreting primary scientific literature. The journal article for a particular week will be placed in a folder in the Science Reading Room and the main library by 5:00 P.M. on Friday of the previous week. The journal article is not to leave either library (you can of course make a personal copy and go elsewhere to read your copy of the article). I will select the first article for discussion, but all other articles to review will be selected by the class. To aid you in this, we'll attend a training session at the library that will illustrate the electronic databases available through the Furman library system, and how to effectively search these databases to find an article relevant to the topic of interest. For each weeks discussion, I will select the topic. However, student teams will be assigned the task of finding references to relevant articles. Each student in the team must find an appropriate article and then post the title and abstract of the article on my course site at blackboard.com (more details on how to do this will be provided the training session at the library). After the 3-4 article titles/abstracts have been posted, all students in the class must then log on to blackboard.com, read through the choices, and vote on the article they want to read in its entirety for the coming weeks discussion session. The article receiving the most votes will be selected to read. The articles you select should be actual research papers published after 1997 - they should NOT be “review articles”. You must select your papers from reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journals. This does not include popular science magazines like Scientific American or Discover magazine. Since animal physiology is such a broad discipline, you can select articles from a number of different journals. Some places you might look include Physiological Zoology, American Zoologist, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Journal of Experimental Biology, and many others. After reading the article on your own you are to write up a one-page (single spaced, 12 point Times New Roman font, 1 inch margins) summary of the assigned article. Your name must be included in the body of the page (not in the header or footer). Your summary must include the hypothesis or goal of the article, a brief description of the methods and results, and the overall conclusion from the article. Please remember to not use direct quotes from the paper. It should be written entirely in your own words. Summaries must be turned in by 4:00 P.M the afternoon BEFORE the journal article is to be discussed (generally this will be a Wednesday afternoon). NOTE: Summaries not turned in by the deadline will have an automatic 75% deduction - NO exceptions, NO excuses. After all the summaries have been turned in (using blackboard.com), students will have the opportunity to read the summaries of all their classmates that evening, before a discussion of the article the following day. The instructor will post a summary as well, but not until after the discussion in class. I will lead the first journal article discussion, but in the weeks to follow two students will be chosen at random to lead the discussion of the article. ALL students are expected to participate in these discussions. Part of your grade on these assignments depends on your participation. Also see: 8. Example Schedule |