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PUBLICATION INFORMATION

TITLE OF PUBLICATION

ENGAGING FIRST YEAR SCIENCE STUDENTS THROUGH A
MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

NAME OF AUTHOR(S)

Eilish McLoughlin and Odilla Finlayson

NAME OF PUBLISHER

International Conference on Engaging Pedagogy, National University of Ireland Maynooth

YEAR OF PUBLICATION

2011

LANGUAGE OF PUBLICATION

English

PUBLICATION TYPOLOGY

Conference Article

TARGET GROUP OF PUBLICATION

School Directors, Teachers

SIZE OF THE PUBLICATION

Over 10 pages

DESCRIPTION OF CONTENTS

This article was presented at the international Conference on Engaging Pedagogy in 2010. It represents another strand of the chemistry curriculum development in Dublin City University.
First year undergraduate science students generally attend lecture and laboratory modules in introductory Chemistry, Physics, Biology and Mathematics, regardless of their ultimate degree
programme. Students often do not see the links between these subject areas and in some cases,
even question the relevance and importance of each discipline.
This paper describes an initiative aimed at communicating the importance and relevance of all curriculum subjects to a cohort of undergraduate students. The students were engaged in all the disciplines through tackling multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary science
problems, in small groups, facilitated by postgraduate tutors. Topical problems included nuclear energy, brewing, water treatment and environmental issues of oil pollution. As a result of this module, students gained an appreciation of the relevance of all science disciplines and of the importance of communication skills.
Evidence obtained from analysis of student feedback, over a four year implementation period with over 600 students, indicates that while many students engage fully with the content, others find the open nature of the problems less appealing. A discussion of the challenges involved in student assessment and in devising suitable problems is presented in this paper.
Then paper describes the need for problem-solving skills and goes on to demonstrate the types of problems that were developed and trialled and the process for delivery of the module.
At the time of writing, the authors describe how this module has been implemented over four years with approximately 180 first-year students each year. The group size was 4 – 5 students which were in the main self-selected. The duration of the module was 12 weeks with some problems running over 2 weeks, and each week, students were timetabled for 3 hours in groups to generate solutions to the problems.
In the first week, all students were given an introductory session outlining the aims of the
module and why it had been developed. They then participated, within their small groups, in a
workshop on group work and finally, within each group, they devised a ‘modus operandi’ of how
each member should behave within their group, and also what they would do in the event of any
difficulties within the group. This was done in order for each group to discuss between
themselves the potential issues that could arise in their group, and to allow them to set the limits within the group on support provided by the group. As the assessment for this module was based
totally on a group mark, then it was important for each member of the group to contribute to the
working of the group.
Over the four years, there were some changes to implementation in the light of student feedback
after each year. For instance, in the first year, the problem session was three hours and the
students were given the following week’s problem at the end of the three hour session. However,
feedback from the group at the end of year 1 focussed on four key issues that the students
encountered, as is summarised in Table 2. In year 1, namely, they wanted more time for their
group to meet after being given the problem; they wanted more clarification on the more open-ended
problems in terms of what was required; they wanted a detailed feedback on their problem
solution; and they asked for some mechanism to show that each member of the group was
contributing to the problem.
The evaluation of the initiative gives some cause for thought but it illustrates one method of introducing the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of science.

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS ON THE PUBLICATION

This publication was chosen because it reports another take on the notion of curriculum development from an inquiry-based or problem-based standpoint.
Perhaps one of the difficulties with Chemistry teaching is to put the abstract in context for the students. This multidisciplinary approach, involving students working in small teams rather than as individuals, is an interesting one.
The statistics for student perceptions of the module and their learning experiences are interesting, with perhaps an average 50% strongly in favour of this new approach. However, it is disturbing that less than half the students felt they had sufficient chemistry to cope with the problems. Likewise, less than 50% felt the modules reinforced what was being learnt in lectures.
The paper highlights the gap in skills development at secondary level that is unfortunately being carried on to third level. It shows that interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches may lead to more positive experiences for Chemistry and other science students.

WHERE TO FIND IT

http://icep.ie/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Engaging-first-year-science-students-through-a-multidisciplinary-approach.pdf

PDF OF THE PUBLICATION

45_Engaging-first-year-science-students-through-a-multidisciplinary-approach.pdf

NAME OF THE REVIEWING ORGANISATION

Limerick Institute of Technology

Comments about this Publication

Your comments are welcome

Date: 2014.04.07

Posted by Sabine Jacquemin (Belgium)

Message: This publication is aimed at increasing students’ awareness of the importance of scientific subjects through the use of different methodologies, such as problem-solving exercises. This is very relevant as a presentation of successful experiments together with its consequent result and discussion, which involves students directly and thus strengthens their interest.
A feedback from students has been given, stating that they enjoyed working in groups more than individually. However results show that students faced more problems due to their lack in chemistry knowledge rather than other subjects. A good percentage of students stated that they had the opportunity to learn many things out of the exercises, which represent a good example for the teachers.

Date: 2014.04.03

Posted by Anna Fedešová (Slovakia)

Message: Publication by McLoughlin and Finlayson describes a four years research in which the authors evaluate the improvement of communication problem solving and team working skills of 600 first year undergraduate science students through tackling multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary science problems. To solve these problems, the students had to work in groups of 4-5 people and use already acquired knowledge in chemistry, physics, biology etc. They had to develop certain skills related to communication, collaboration, scientific argumentation, literature search, oral presentation, poster preparation, scientific paper writing, etc. Publication offers a practical design to improve a weak point of the educational system which has negative consequences for employment and evaluate the success of the module design afterwards. This teaching methodolgy could also be applied to secondary education and suitably adapted in the framework of a school project.

Date: 2014.04.01

Posted by Giorgio Matricardi (Italy)

Message: The publication describes experiences in which students, accompanied by postgraduate tutors, were committed to addressing multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary scientific problems through group activities.
The relevance of the publication consists in the awareness attained by students with regard to the interaction of scientific disciplines in the understanding of the problems encountered and the importance of communication skills
One of the critical factors discussed concerns the group work, definitely preferred by students: the contribution that each student has given to the work of the group has been shown to be greater than that produced individually. Thanks to a careful choice of the issues to tackle, the key skills that students have developed are not normally introduced in first year classrooms and contribute to the formation of successful science students and of potential effective researchers. In the focus group discussion a group composed mainly of girls, showed little interest in the development of skills such as litterature search and synthesis, finding scientific data and evidences, scientific presentation and writing, if they are not explicitly required by the curriculum or if they are related to successive stages of the program. A more direct measurement of the particular skills and a detailed analysis of the students group discussion and processes are indicated as future insights of the research.
The publication indicates to teachers the effectiveness of cooperative work in science education both in terms of the skills developed by the students and for the results Achieved by them.
I consider the publication particularly useful for the evidence it provides to teachers about the importance interdisciplinary approaches in science education and interaction between scientific knowledge in the explanation of complex problems

Date: 2014.03.31

Posted by Theodoros Vachliotis (Greece)

Message: This publication describes the implementation of an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary teaching approach to more than 600 first year science students, in a time period of four consecutive academic years and via a series of selected problems which were given to the students. In order to solve these problems, the students had to work in groups of 4-5 people and use already acquired knowledge in chemistry, physics, biology and math. In addition, they had to develop certain skills related to communication, collaboration, scientific argumentation, literature search, oral presentation, poster preparation, scientific paper writing, etc.
This teaching approach is, in my opinion, especially useful for tertiary education since it relies on cooperative teaching, which seems in general to have positive results in learning. In addition, it provides students with the possibility to conceive the connections between different scientific disciplines. It is now generally accepted that the resolution and study of most problems and phenomena of everyday life require parallel contributions from different fields and this teaching proposal orients students in this direction. In addition, it gives them the opportunity, even from their freshman year, to start and develop very important skills which are indispensable to a future scientist and researcher.
I believe that this approach could also be applied to secondary education as well, suitably adapted in the framework of a school project. As also pointed out by the authors, it would be especially interesting to continue this research with another one which would focus mainly on the evaluation of specific skills acquired by the students involved as well as to the processes that the students follow in order to find a solution to a specific scientific problem.

Date: 2014.03.27

Posted by Ana Martín Lasanta (Spain)

Message: The work published by McLoughlin and Finlayson describes a four years research in which the authors tried to evaluate the improvement of communication problem solving and team working skills of ca. 600 first year undergraduate science students through tackling multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary science problems. In my opinion, this paper is relevant because it describes a real experience. It sinterest stems from the original idea (The objective was set as response to some former employment/skills reports). In other words, the project is a practical design to improve a weak point of the educational system which has negative consequences for employment and evaluate the success of the module design afterwards. In the paper, the proposal is related thoroughtly within the
classical format of a research report. Students feedback was used after the first year of implemention in order to identify the problems of the experience and find solutions to overcome them. Moreover, McLoughlin and Finlayson´s work
clearly presents the results of the module, draws some conclusions and makes a general summary facilitating other teachers to develop similar projects by themselves. It has been a really interesting Reading for me.

National Reports on successful experiences to promote lifelong learning for chemistry The national reports on chemistry successful experiences to promote lifelong learning for chemistry are now available on the related section of the project portal. The reports presents examples of successful experiences in the partner countries and the results of testing of ICT resources with science teachers.