Helping Students Develop and Mature as Scientists

During these last few months, I have been thinking a great deal about creating community in both the undergraduate and graduate level courses I teach. In my January 2018 editorial (Schmidt, 2018), I focused on building community in the classroom based on the four key motivational conditions for adult learning outlined in the work of Dr. Raymond Wlodkowski – establish inclusion, develop positive attitudes, enhance personal meaning, and engender competence. In this editorial, I would like to focus on the idea of intentionally building a scientific community in the classroom. The underlying impetus for this idea comes from the book Making Scientists (Light & Micari, 2013). I recently ran across the Making Scientists book on the desk of a colleague I was visiting. The intriguing nature of the title, as well as a quick look through the book, caused me to quickly purchase a copy of my own; and I must say, it was well worth it!

Based on their own transformative experiences, Light & Micari contend that the learning environment is just as critical to academic success in the sciences as a person's individual ability. As such, the book identifies and discusses six learning principles that characterize the environment in which the best science is conducted: 1) Learning deeply; 2) Engaging problems; 3) Connecting peers; 4) Mentoring learning; 5) Creating community; and 6) Doing research. Collectively, these six principles provide a practical framework for designing and implementing educational practices and innovations that are consistent with the actual practice of science. Instead of just the simple acquisition of facts about science, the focus of these principles is making scientists. As described by Light and Micari (2013), the best science learning “engages students with science materials through cutting edge learning approaches within legitimate science communities (p. 14).” The main outcomes of these “cutting-edge”1 learning approaches are intended to be essentially the same for students as they are for their science professors and other practicing scientists – construction and discovery of ideas that are new, exciting, and meaningful. Though for students, the learning will seldom be truly original compared to the research scientist, “but the learning and personal construction of knowledge are nevertheless new, exciting, and deeply original for the student and his or her peer group (p. 14).”

Though it was just a few weeks before the Spring 2018 semester was going to begin, I decided to incorporate these six principles into the graduate level course I was about to teach, Food Science and Human Nutrition 595 Water Relations in Foods. As I worked to embrace and embed these principles into the fabric of the course, they became my own, so-to-speak. The more I learned, the more excited I became about making scientists! On the first day of class, I introduced the six learning principles from the Making Scientists book and shared with my students, not only the specific student-centered course content-based learning objectives, but also a new underlying course objective: to help students develop and mature as scientists. Each student (that is, learner) was invited and encouraged to become an active member of the FSHN 595 scientific community. Toward the end of the semester, we will be carrying out an anonymous formal assessment, but gauging by the students’ participation during class discussions and the myriad of questions they pose during and after class, it appears that the students have accepted the invitation! Based on the assessment results, we are hoping to implement the objective of helping students develop and mature as scientists in the undergraduate course I teach, Introduction to Food Science and Human Nutrition 101.

In an effort to help students achieve this underlying objective—to develop and mature as scientists—I developed and employed a number of pedagogical practices in FSHN 595. The one that I think is most readily adaptable and easy to implement in classrooms, large and small, graduate and undergraduate, is breakout groups. The idea of using breakout groups to enhance learning is not new, but what is new is the focus of the groups: to help students develop and mature as scientists. These student scholars are combining their resources and resourcefulness to solve a problem or participate in an activity, where the main outcomes are deeper learning and understanding; not just a group of students trying to get the right answers, so they can get good grades. The underlying purpose of breakout groups is to provide the students with an opportunity to connect with their peers and engage in problem solving (Principles 2 and 3 above), with just the right level of difficulty2, in small groups. Educational research shows that engaging students in problem solving as part of the course content increases student motivation, improves recall of previously learned background information, and enhances retrieval of relevant information learned in class. These beneficial results of problem solving are further enhanced by solving the problems in a team format, rather than alone. Thus, breakout sessions are team problem solving opportunities for enhanced scientific learning, similar to an academic research lab group meeting or an industrial research and development department meeting, where everyone is focused on solving the problem at hand because it is a meaningful (important) problem requiring a real (practical) solution.

On the first day of class, students were randomly assigned (using a deck of playing cards, wherein they got to keep the card they choose, which they liked) to their permanent breakout groups. The number of groups was selected so that there were 4 to 5 students per group. During each class session, the students are given a problem or activity to work on in their breakout groups. Some examples of problems and activities are provided in Table 1. As the “Principle Investigator,” I travel from group to group to see how things are progressing. Sometimes, I stop and join in on the conversation; while other times, I stop and just listen. In either case, I enjoy listening to the students grapple with the problem or activity at hand. At the end of the breakout session, one or more groups have the opportunity to present their work to the rest of the class. Questions are asked and suggestions offered by the other groups, usually resulting in an enhanced “end product.” Upon completion of the breakout session, each group submits a group breakout document as their deliverable for evaluation, with all group members earning the same number of points, usually five points per session.

I am really happy about how the breakout groups are working so far, but I am also seeing opportunities to make modifications and improvements. For example, one need I sense is to include a “working alone” component. Working in breakout groups helps students build their problem-solving skills, but working alone will help students develop independent thinking skills and help them grow in their self-efficacy. In addition, working alone may appeal to students with introvert temperaments (Schmidt, 2016), allowing them to formulate their thoughts before entering the group discussion and dynamics. One way to incorporate the working alone component is, instead of always starting the problem solving in the Breakout groups, students could be instructed to start the problem solving on their own first and then join together in their breakout group to share what they have done so far, and then continue the problem-solving effort together, combining and refining their solution(s). Incorporating the “working alone” component also acknowledges that some people may develop and mature into scientists more rapidly given time to work alone, rather than if their only option is to work in a group. In addition, using a variety of approaches helps avoid the “one-size-fits-all” mentality and aims to maximize both individual, as well as collective, learning benefits. It also keeps us teachers on our mental toes, so-to-speak, calling us to implement the quality assurance philosophy of continuous improvement in all of our pedagogical practices!