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presenting on plants at WCeLfest

For the last few years our Centre for e-Learning has run WCeLfest - a day of presentations & discussion around using various technology tools to enhance teaching & learning. I always find these sessions very valuable as there are a lot of people doing some really interesting things in their classrooms, & there's always something new to learn & try out myself. I offered to run a session myself this year, which is what I'm going to talk about here, but I was also asked to be on the panel for a discussion around what universities might look like in the future, and that was heaps of fun too.

My WCeLfest session was billed as a workshop, so to kick things off I explained that the attendees were going to experience being in what is effectively a 'flipped' class, getting the students' perspective, and why I'd developed the class in the way that I had. (I added that feedback on that experience was welcome!) I think there was one biologist in the room, so for most of those present the things they'd be doing would be just as novel as they will be for many of my students.

First, my 'class' got some extra background information. If previous years are anything to go by, then about a third of the students in my first-year biology class won't have studied the year 12 Achievement Standards related to plants1. This always poses something of a challenge as we run the 'plants' part of the paper first, flowers & fruit being readily available in late summer (& I doubt things would be different if we taught it later in the paper). So I'm always thinking about improved ways to bridge students into the subject without boring those who have a reasonable background in things botanical.

The first lecture looks at what plants are & why they're important, both ecologically & in terms of human history. For the last 2-3 years I've used an active learning exercise, putting up a graph on changes in atmospheric oxygen over the 4.5 billion years of Earth's existence and asking the students to interpret and discuss the information it shows. But, using the same graph with a different group of learners, I realised that some of my students might not even know what photosynthesis entails, which would rather destroy the purpose of that part of the class.

So this year, they're getting homework for the night before: this video. And at WCeLfest, we watched it together.

As you'll have seen, there are a few, very basic, questions at the end of the video, but we stopped the video before reaching the quiz & instead briefly discussed and answered each question in groups, plus there were some additional queries, which was great. The original set of questions reinforce the basic concepts & give those students who were unfamiliar with them a bit of confidence that they're prepared for the next step.

Now, for my 'real' class I'll be showing an additional, more complex video, but for this shorter session we just moved on to the data interpretation.

Again, I explained the rationale behind this part of the session. I'd decided to do this exercise with my first-year students for a couple of reasons: firstly, to break up the class and get them actively engaged in the learning process; and secondly, to give practice in the process skills needed to interpret information provided in graphical form. The question they needed to address, using their knowledge from the video and the data in the graph, was: without plants, life as we know it wouldn't have evolved in the first place. Why not?

O2 concn over time.png

As I do in my normal classes, while the class split into groups to come up with an answer, I circulated between those groups2 in order to hear what was going on & field any additional questions. "What was the atmosphere made of before photosynthesis began?" was one, which led to a brief consideration of how the Earth formed. And I needed to explain oxidised/oxidation, as well. This was a really valuable process for me as it's highlighted a couple of areas where I need to do a little more background work with my first-years.

A quick summary of the class discussion: the 'oxidation' part is important because that's how we know when oxygen generation began - iron-rich rocks began to rust. It wasn't until the exposed rocks had been oxidised and the ocean had become saturated with oxygen, that oxygen began to be released into the atmosphere, as evidenced by more oxidised rock. As O2 accumulated in the atmosphere, the ozone layer formed, offering protection from the sun's UV radiation & allowing living things to move onto the land.

And we finished with a quick look at the 'design-an-organism' class that I've previously blogged about.

The feedback was very positive, with several people saying that they could see how they might use the flipped classroom technique in their own teaching. It was also lovely to hear someone say that they'd got a bit worried when they realised we'd be talking science, but that they'd really enjoyed the experience and learned some new things along the way. And I'd learned ways to improve the exercise, so the enjoyment & learning were mutual


1 These are AS91155 Demonstrate understanding of adaptation of plants or animals to their way of life, and AS91156 Demonstrate understanding of life processes at the cellular level. You'll find them here on the NZQA website.

2 In my ideal class3 there'd be an 'aisle' between every 2 rows of seating, to allow teachers/facilitators to move more freely among the students.

3 I can dream, can't I?



| | Comments (1)


I got a ten gallon aquarium (which I REALLY wanted!) after getting good grades in 1st grade. (Guess why I got those grades?)

Anywho, that was a very good way to learn about plants and oxygen. And keeping fish!

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