The more a student puts skills or knowledge to use, the better
the learning and the more long term the memory of that learning or skill use.
As this course satisfies a portion of the general education requirement, I
thought to use one of the objectives (To recognize problem areas where the
scientific method can be appropriately applied) from the general education
assessment strategy. One of the more important skills that a scientifically
literate adult needs to have is the ability to evaluate the structure of an
experiment and determine its quality. For non-science majors, it is important
that they be able to assess the quality of a study by evaluating the quality
of the experimental and control groups and to be able to understand what was
actually tested as opposed to what someone else (most notably the media) might
think it said.
Description:
The day after a topic is mentioned in the media (local or national
news), the students are asked to look up the complete article and answer questions
concerning the validity and accuracy of the information. This occurred four
times in the semester. For each of the four topics, the first questions were
identical: 1) Were the experimental and control groups adequate? 2) Were they
treated in the same fashion? 3) Evaluate the logic of the conclusion as reported
by the news media. Finally, there would be one additional question unique
to the study in question. For example, there was a news item about the incidence
of breast cancer in Massachusetts versus the rest of the country. The students
were asked to answer the usual questions plus a question concerning perceived
or absolute increases (Was the perceived increase in the number of breast
cancer cases in Massachusetts due to an absolute increase or as a result of
early and more common screening?). Students were then to email their answers
to me. The total number of points given decreased each day of the answer period
Result:
Most students did come away with a better sense of critical reading
and understanding of the structure of human health-related studies and also
increased their internet skill. An astonishing negative was the number of
students who could not navigate the web or, once given a URL, navigate within
a complex web site such as CDC.gov. Apparently some high schools provide students
with the URL for the specific page and call it research or browsing. For approximately
20% of the class this was a major hindrance.
Other comments:
Once again, students seemed to have trouble with the concept
of the U_ account access. They all wanted me to use their “home”
address and when I told them that they needed to be able to access multiple
accounts (job and home), several just told me that they would simply not do
the work rather than even try to learn how to access their UMD accounts. Several
said that other faculty used their home accounts so I should.
