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INTRODUCTION to the Mary Lou "Quizzes"
Learning experiences with 100% student attention!
GOALS: These "Mary Lou Quizzes" were designed to satisfy a number of pedagogical goals.
WHAT THEY REALLY ARE. These are not really quizzes, but a bit of subterfuge which, because they are called "quizzes", afford almost 100% student attention with the result that these are often faster ways of teaching than are lectures, where students' minds wander.
The "quizzes" have small groups of your students join five fictional students and their teacher as they attempt to solve problems. Like all problems, these are in real world settings that provide both needed and superfluous information for examination. In a way, your students will have on-the-job training experiences as they go through sets of these quizzes.
MECHANICS: Because these are so different from all other "quizzes" that your students have ever taken, they will require some getting used to. But life outside the ivy-covered halls is like that also. This author usually started with the "quiz" on the discovery of what photosynthesis was all about. Students are told to divide themselves into groups of three or four, they are given the instructions before they are given copies of the quiz. The instructions are simple: read the sheet, talk about it among yourselves, and when you think you have a right answer, scribble it down on one of the sheets (it must be in writing), and show it to the teacher. Like nature, the teacher will only say "yes" or "no", and may give a hint as to whether they are close to the answer or not. Only a complete and correct answer counts. The first group to get it right, gets a number of points equal to twice the base credit (say, 10 pts); the next right group gets one or two points less. After five groups have gotten it correct, all other groups sign and turn in their papers so as to get base credit (say, 5 pts). Thus all students who are present get credit, and those absent get zero credit. Finally each student is given a copy of the quiz. For the first time the students are reluctant to talk during a quiz, and they will moan that this is impossible. They are totally inexperienced in thinking in class, although they may relish riddles outside of school. Soon an excited voice will be unable to contain itself somewhere in the room and a proposed step to the solution will be made within a group - lots of whispering in that group - other groups take note knowing that solution is possible were they only able to see it! By the end of the semester, the students almost look forward to these. And to see the students later attend a seminar or look at the posters of competitors at a meeting! Questions are asked. Suggestions for further study are made. You as the teacher will be proud to see that your students have gained a bit of scientific maturity - they know a bit better how to act like a scientist and how to explore and discover - it is a group effort - a social activity.
Some students get upset about the "soap opera" settings until they realize that the social strategies portrayed in the stories sometimes mimic strategies taken by pathogens or other scientific principles - in other words, non-scientific parables of scientific matters.
Going back the the photosynthesis quiz: this is about the discovery of what those green bodies (chloro-plasts) are doing in the cell. Back in the first decade of the 1900's, Prof. Endenmann discovered that they were the seat of photosynthesis observed with whole cells. Tell your students to imagine that they were doing this work in 1905 or so. What momentous data are staring you in the face? The students will leave with a feeling of "Now I understand HOW we know that." After more such experiences of "HOW", the students will be atuned to WONDERING how other things are known and work - and that is the doorway to real science - so that they can discover new facts.
PINATA PARTY: At the end of the semester a small party can be held with a piņata of Mary Lou. The students will all be delighted to bash her to smithereens!
The Mary Lou Quizzes are divided into sets. Each set generally pursues a line of thought and discovery. Many of the members of the sets present data that lead the students to conclusions, which, if they, the students, had done these things decades earlier, the students would have seen themselves awarded Nobel Prizes. An example is the Hershey-Chase experiment that showed that DNA alone goes into the E.coli cell, and that DNA alone must therefore be the stuff of genes. There are also quizzes that deal with the semiconservative replication of DNA. But because the students quickly learn to expect Nobel experiments, Mary Lou and her friends went about it in a totally different way using autoradiography. That quiz usually finds one student suddenly yelling "Ah, ha!" and then lots of whisperings of explanation to group members with the result that the right answer is rushed forward.
BACK TO MECHANICS: But what about all those groups who did not come up with a right answer, and did not "win" any extra points? How are they going to learn where they went wrong? Over the years, this author had the top winner of a quiz give a transparency presentation to the class the next time. (Do I hear you teachers exclaiming: "Ah, ha! You are also teaching presentation techniques?") The non-winners know the "quiz" in detail, and soon they are shaking their heads in dismay that they didn't see the obvious.
So what are these specifically? You will have to copy them out, and, of course, format them to your own headings, etc. Perhaps even correct typos But you are warned: Do not laugh too hard in some of them! You can find them in the
MORE PEDAGOGICAL PHILOSOPHY
(Don't read this unless you really, really want to!)
For those who have experienced it, the real entrance into scientific studies begins when entering the doors of graduate school. Outside of those few instances where students have been able to do original projects, students sit and have facts shovelled into their heads. But facts are not science. Science is a process - the process of exploration and discovery.
Of course, some facts are needed to be known to do science - to do the process. Alas, teaching the arts of exploration and discovery are almost totally bypassed until graduate school.* One of the things that first strikes graduate students is the fact that they are embarking on a rather social adventure - frequent lab discussion groups, working together on various facets of a problem, going to meetings, talking about their work over lunch, learning the social ropes of contact with people elsewhere in the world. As said, it is not only what you know, but who you know. The life of a scientist is not going to classes, or being buried in some corner of a lab somewhere working alone. Scientific openmindedness and thinking does not stop at 5 p.m. One eats, drinks and sleeps scientific exploration.
But how to get this across to students! And not necessarily science students either. One biology chairman said that the most important course in the department was that for the non-science majors. "Afterall, that is where the future legislators and city council members will come from. They need to know what science is in all its strengths and weaknesses."
* professional schools such as in medicine, dentistry and nursing, only modestly touch upon how new information is gathered to add new instructions into their professional "cookbooks" of how to do approved procedures. Such students are encouraged to take as many research rotations as possible. The "Doctor God" syndrome runs rampant because they think they know all there is to know, but much of that is not known with what degree of certainty. Knowledge is said to be knowing the facts, while wisdom is knowing what you don't know.
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