An Alternative Approach to a Didactic Style of Teaching

Written by Dan Dwyer, School of Human Life Sciences

Introduction

One of the five units I teach in Exercise Science is an advanced unit taught to third and fourth year students in Health Sciences and Human Movement. The unit is intended to introduce them to some of the most important areas of research in health and exercise physiology. An additional goal of this unit is to allow the students to practice their skills in literature searching, and in oral and written communication.

The issue

By the time our students have completed two years of study, they have not had to interpret research articles as they appear in scientific journals, nor have they any appreciation of the most important research questions within this discipline. These tasks are usually covered in third and fourth year units. In my experience, students can be confused, daunted and disinterested when they are introduced to research information for the first time. Journal articles are usually written for a narrow audience of specialists and therefore have very little background

information and include a lot of jargon. Therefore, I think the most important challenge for educators who have to introduce students to research articles is to make the information understandable and clearly illustrate the significance and relevance of the topic. Communicating the requisite amount of factual information is also an important goal, but this won't happen easily if the audience is not receptive to information presented in the unique format of a scientific article.

The teaching and learning process

In the past, I have conducted all of the lectures myself, ensuring control of style and content. Each lecture is complemented with a tutorial, challenging students with interesting questions aimed at stimulating a discussion of the meaning and the implications of the research findings. Despite the merits of this model, I decided against it and instead another approach to teaching was utilised in an attempt to improve student engagement with the material and my own time efficiency. This alternative approach directly involves the students in the design and delivery of the unit.

The first few introductory lectures that addressed the way in which the unit would be taught, the nature of science and research, and also included a practical session designed to update students' literature searching skills. We also spent time negotiating some of the topics to be covered during the remainder of the semester. I had chosen a list of essential topics but left room for other topics that the students found interesting and were within the health and exercise physiology discipline.

Each student was required to make an oral presentation to the class on two related research articles on an agreed topic. I saw all articles prior to each

session to ensure their suitability and retained a copy of the abstract from each article. It was also the responsibility of each student who was not scheduled to make a presentation in the session, to read the article abstracts (posted on my web page) prior to every session.

In each week there were two student presentations in a three-hour period. I usually presented a brief overview of the background to the research topic that was to be presented by the student and then allowed them to make their presentation. Each presentation was followed by a discussion about the validity of the research design and methods, the interpretation of the results by the author as well as the practical and theoretical implications of the author's conclusions. Where possible, a colleague was invited along to contribute to the discussion, if they had particular expertise in this area. I guided the discussion by asking questions of both the presenter and the audience. Students asked each other questions, and we discussed, and sometimes debated their answers.

My role of discussion moderator was sometimes challenging and often fulfilling. There were times when it was a struggle to stimulate discussion amongst the students and other times when it was difficult to contain the exchange of views. During the semester the students improved their ability to analyse the research information being presented to them and to ask concise questions of their colleagues. This conclusion is based on my qualitative impression of the number of students asking questions, the total number of questions asked and the complexity of the questions. They also learnt the valuable lesson that not all questions have simple, uncontentious answers. Where possible, I also tried to relate the topic of our discussions with information presented to the students in other units.

Assessment

Assessment for this unit was spread between the oral presentation (30%), a short written report on the articles they presented (20%) and a larger written review on another topic within the health and exercise science discipline (50%).

Reflections

The formal and informal feedback that I received on this approach to teaching was very positive. The strength of the approach from the student's point of view was their ability to have some control over content and hence relevance of this unit. The informal discussion during the lectures also promoted engagement with the topic and interaction between students. From my point of view, the students achieved most of the learning objectives I had aimed for. They also learned about the challenges of making a presentation and subsequently became more responsive members of the audience.

Compared to my usual style of teaching, my workload was a little lower outside of class time but higher during class time, due to the demands of my role as discussion moderator. In retrospect, I wonder why I didn't spend more time explaining how to read scientific articles and how to organize the information into an oral presentation. I did little on the former and merely demonstrated the latter. Despite this omission, the students appeared to have discovered these skills in their own time.

The adoption of an approach with greater opportunity for students to negotiate the curriculum has been a positive experience and I find myself tempted to incorporate this in other units

My personal litmus test for the success or otherwise of a lecture/tutorial, is the amount of student interest I have generated. I usually measure this by the number of people that remain at the end of the class to continue to ask questions of me and to discuss the issues. On this measure, I have never been more successful.

Student comments

I have included here some comments made by students from their SETL evaluation of the unit.

Comment 1:

The group discussions made things easier to understand. Talking among students is sometimes easier than talking just to the lecturer, as the terms used are easier to understand.

Comment 2:

The atmosphere in the class was conducive to higher learning.

Comment 3:

I liked the opportunity to discuss issues in Exercise Physiology to further my understanding of the topic.