Abstract
Background:
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Effective teaching and learning is a major challenge in large class teaching. This gets more significant in foundation courses in which newly admitted students are with diverse training background. Along with the board-based undergraduate admission, bioscience courses with student enrollment reaching 100 or more are common in School of Life Sciences.
Objectives:
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This project aims to develop Peer-Assisted Learning (PAL) to enhance teaching and learning in five bioscience courses with large class size.
Methodology:
- We will recruit senior year life sciences students to build a team of Peer Teaching Assistants (pTAs). Guided training will be provided to pTAs who will later lead small group tutorials. In addition to classrooms, web conferencing will be adopted to bring more flexibility in the tutorials. Our scheme will be carried out in different phases including pTAs recruitment and training, preparation of teaching materials and evaluations.
Expected outcomes and deliverables:
- The PAL suite will create an interactive peer-learning environment for over 700 students to strengthen their learning and engagement. A collection of pTAs-led tutorials and teaching materials will be produced. Through the development of PAL, we will establish a credit-bearing course “Internship in bioscience teaching” to provide training for science students interested in education.
Brief write-up
Project objectives
This project aims to develop a Peer-Assisted Learning (PAL) platform to enhance teaching and learning in 5 bioscience courses with large class size and to develop teaching tools through engaging senior year life science students as peer teaching assistants (pTAs).
Activities, process and outcomes
Each cycle of PAL worked on 2-3 specific sets of courses (LSCI1002 “Introduction to Biological Sciences”, LSCI2002 “Basic Laboratory Techniques in Life Sciences”, BCHE2030 “Fundamentals of Biochemistry”, BCHE3070 “Recombinant DNA Techniques” and BCHE3650 “Molecular Biology and Recombinant DNA Laboratory”), and commonly consisting of 4 phases: recruitment & training of pTAs, compilation of teaching materials, tutorials and evaluation. Question pools were generated to better understand the learning curve of the students. A taskforce was formed for the development of teaching tools.
Deliverables and evaluation
• 57 senior year life science students were recruited to organize 265 small group tutorials
• Relevant sets of tutorial materials are compiled and available on Blackboard
• Two question pools were collected and analyzed based on Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Development of 12 animated videos for self-study (in progress)
As reflected from the evaluations, PAL plays a critical role in driving knowledge acquisition and motivation in learning. Experiential learning of pTAs reinforces their knowledge and strengthens their generic skills, especially skills in organization, presentation and communication.
Dissemination, diffusion, impact and sharing of good practices
We have presented our work in one local and two overseas education symposiums.
Impact on teaching and learning
PAL has provided a student-oriented out-class channel to enhance teaching and learning. This is essential for junior students who commonly find difficulties to adapt to university study.
