Reuben Manjit SINGH, Seow Chong LEE, Yuan Yuan CHEW, and Foong May YEONG
Department of Biochemistry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (YLLSOM)
Singh, R. M., Lee, S. C., Chew, Y. Y., & Yeong, F. M. (2023). Student feedback on an online scientific inquiry course: Lessons learned [Poster presentation]. In Higher Education Campus Conference (HECC) 2023, 7 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecc2023proceedings/student-feedback-on-an-online-scientific-inquiry-course-lessons-learned/
SUB-THEME
Interdisciplinarity and Education
KEYWORDS
Multidisciplinary, nature of science, student feedback, fully online
CATEGORY
Poster Presentation
INTRODUCTION
As part of the Common Curriculum, students enrolled in the College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS) read Scientific Inquiry (SI) courses. In our SI course “From DNA to Gene Therapy”, we used the notion of the Nature of Science (NOS) (McComas & Olson, 2002) to explore scientific practices from different disciplines (Schwartz et al., 2004). These included the scientific method, and the history and sociology of scientific endeavours. Our multidisciplinary course afforded students different lenses through which they could view the practices of science and could potentially ease them into subsequent interdisciplinarity courses (Diphoorn et al., 2023). Here we describe our analysis of students’ feedback to understand their perceptions on a fully online multidisciplinary course.
METHODS
Course information
The course HSI2003 “From DNA to Gene Therapy” was taught in semester II, Academic Year 2022/23. Yeong F. M. was the course coordinator with Lee S. C. and R. M. Singh serving as tutors. The course enrolment comprised 78 students mostly from the Faculty of Science. The course was fully online, with recorded lectures hosted on Canvas, and virtual tutorials held on MS Teams. For assessments, students were graded on individual quizzes, group assignments, and a summative essay. The quizzes were mainly content-based while the tutorial questions, group projects, and individual summative essay required students to discuss different aspects of scientific practices.
Coding of student feedback
Content analysis (Cohen et al., 2011) was performed on students’ end-of-year formal feedback. The anonymous comments were coded independently by R. M. Singh and Lee S. C. after a preliminary discussion. The codes were then categorised based on common themes.
RESULTS
We received 48 unique comments from students’ feedback. These were coded into 19 positive and 31 negative codes (Table 1). 72.2% of the positive codes were related to how the students found the topics approachable and interesting. These were categorised into the theme of overall course content. 27.8% pertained to self-directed learning, and were categorised into lectures. The negative codes were derived from comments on assignments and tutorials. Where assignments (51.6%) were concerned, the students felt dissatisfied at the release dates of assignments, digital platform used for group assignments, and the uneven distribution of workload within the group. For tutorials (48.4%), students disliked the online format, and preferred them to be held physically.
Table 1
Positive and negative student feedback classified by themes
DISCUSSION
As this was the first run of our course, it is informative to analyse students’ feedback. Indeed, their positive comments on the content are surprising. Nonetheless, they imply that multidisciplinary, and potentially, interdisciplinary content could be well-accepted by both science and non-science students if the contents were packaged and delivered appropriately. However, these are inadequate for good student learning experiences. It appears that post-pandemic, while students prefer didactic lectures to remain online for self-directed learning, they want group-based tutorials to be face-to-face due to constraints in the online environment. For instance, students were able to keep their cameras off during tutorials, and this led to a lack of facial and body cues that reduced engagement and hampered collaboration. Also, as students did not meet face-to-face, there was low level of accountability among group members. Based on the feedback, we have planned solutions for the subsequent semesters to address various issues (Table 2). By accounting for students’ feedback as part of our continuous improvement cycle, we hope to provide better student learning experiences in subsequent semesters.
Table 2
Issues identified and potential solutions
REFERENCES
Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2011). Research Methods in Education (7th ed.). Routledge.
Diphoorn, T., McGonigle Leyh, B., Knittel, S. C., Huysmans, M., & Goch, M. V. (2023). Traveling concepts in the classroom : experiences in interdisciplinary education. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Education, 12 (S1), 1–14. Retrieved from https://www.ojed.org/index.php/jise/article/view/4844
McComas, William F, & Olson, J. K. (2002). The nature of science in international science education standards documents. In W. F McComas (Ed.), The Nature of Science in Science Education, Science & Technology Education Library, vol 5 (Issue 1996, pp. 41–52). Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-47215-5_2
Schwartz, R., Lederman, N. G., & Crawford, B. a. (2004). Developing views of nature of science in an authentic context: An explicit approach to bridging the gap between nature of science and scientific inquiry. Science Education, 88(4), 610–45. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.10128