BioQUEST SCOPE and OER: Exploring the Methods of SCOPE and the interactions with OER
From OER Commons Wiki
Contents |
Introduction
The SCOPE project aims to improve undergraduate biology education using innovative approaches and tools. Funded by an NSF grant, SCOPE is a collaboration among The BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium, OER Commons, The San Diego Supercomputing Educational Program, and the Center for Science Education at Emory University.
In its workshops, SCOPE brings together undergraduate biology teachers with an interdisciplinary team of educators, scientists, curriculum specialists, and technologists, to explore new approaches to science education and to develop collaborative curriculum explorations and curricular resources.
The SCOPE methodology is indeed innovative–both in its recommendations for undergraduate student work, and in its own collaborative methods of teacher development.
SCOPE Workshop Methods
SCOPE has a few cornerstone ideas and methods. These include:
Investigative Case-Based Learning (ICBL)
Investigative Case-Based Learning is a kind of problem-based learning that engages students in the work of scientists by presenting them with realistic narrative scenarios which require investigation and analysis. In the course of the exploration, students must understand the information given, decide what information needs to be found, and begin to develop a plan for defining both the relevant questions to be asked and their answers. At the end of the investigation, students must be able to persuade their peers and others of the validity of their approach and the results.
For more information on Investigative Case-Based Learning, see http://www.bioquest.org/icbl/
"The Three P's"
In the course of Investigative Case-Based Learning, students practice what BioQUEST calls the "Three P's" (hence their clever logo).
Problem Posing
Finding, identifying and delimiting problems is one of the roles of a scientist. Students may erroneously be led to believe that problems come fully-formed, because that has been their experience from textbooks. In this approach, students learn how to think about problem posing, considering factors like bias, significance, and feasibility.
Problem Solving
Problems in science are unlike those found on many exams- they're not about the correct answer chosen from several others. The come as a result of exploring multiple hypotheses, making long and careful observations through experiment or field work. Results are often provisional, and sometimes research in the real world is abandoned. Students need this experience to develop strategies to solve problems.
Peer Persuasion
Scientific progress can only occur if people other than the researchers are convinced of the results. This social aspect of science needs to be seen as part of the professional lives of those working in the field. Just as students use technology tools in posing and solving their problems, they also may use tools like word-processors, spreadsheets, presentation and graphics software to help communicate and persuade.
For more information about the "Three P's" see the BioQUEST page here: http://bioquest.org/the-3-peas-concept/
Problem Spaces
Problem Spaces allow teachers to gather an open-ended collection of resources, potential research questions, data, references, assignments, cases (from the Investigative Case-Based Learning), and even student work in a common space. You can also think about problem spaces as the intersection of a set of scientific principles, a set of analysis tools, and specific data sets.
This space can be supported by (or represented in) collaborative technology tools like a wiki, or a mind map, or a collaborative website. Problem spaces are meant to be flexible (allowing people from various backgrounds to contribute); open-ended (enabling users to take questions and ideas in different directions); and dynamic (growing along with the users work).
For more information on Problem Spaces, please see: http://www.bioquest.org/scope/problem_spaces.php
A glimpse of part of a Problem Space relating to Pollen is here: http://www.netvibes.com/ssdonova#Background
SCOPE, Science, and OER
At a SCOPE workshop, OER materials and methods come together to support the pedagogical and scientific aims of the workshop. In other words, the whole approach of open educational resources fits very well with the methods doing good science as well as the effective teaching of science to undergraduates. Let's look at some of the common threads and themes that come up during the workshop, and how intertwined they are.
Modeling
One of the easiest features of the SCOPE approach is how much modeling happens. The operative pedagogical approach at a SCOPE workshop is "learning by doing." If the goal is to get undergraduate students to focus less on memorization and more on acting like scientists, the analogous goal for the workshop is to model the kind of teaching that the college teachers will need to do. Therefore, when introducing the concept of case-based learning, workshop leaders do not just explain about cases, but actually model a real case.
In the SCOPE workshop in San Diego, you can see BioQUEST director Ethel Stanley introduce a case on viruses. Specifically, she has found an oral history related to the influenza epidemic of 1918.
Note how this case-- and audio recording of an oral history from a survivor of the epidemic--engages the listeners, and prepares them for the process of investigation. The case itself is a great example of OER. SCOPE leaders Ethel Stanley and Margaret Waterman found this oral history by searching the OER collection at http://www.oercommons.org/.
In another example of modeling, Margaret Waterman shows participants how to navigate an online tool to look at the geographic spread of bird flu over time.
In modeling the use of this resource, she helps guide what features participants should notice. At the same time, she is modeling what resource sharing can look like for the participants in their own college classrooms.
After the participants understand the idea of case-based learning, Dr. Stanley models an example of how one might build a case to deal with a certain set of intriguing science facts.
Science
It shouldn't be a surprise that a major part of the workshop is looking at the science of particular cases. As science teachers, the participants want to model what scientists do, and want to show what science really is.
Working with data, thinking with data
For that reason, there are many chances to work with real data, and to talk about what data mean. In the following clip, notice how one of the participants shares avian genetic data, and points out assumptions made by the people who put the data together.
Another participant asks "how do you read this?" which prompts the first participant to explain the data.
In another case, Drs. Stanley and Waterman explain why catching bird flu depends on close physical proximity to birds:
Notice here how Dr. Stanley makes explicit some of the ramifications of this result. You can infer her thinking process: "If the H5 receptors are low, under what circumstances would humans be able to transmit bird flu from one to another?"
What science is
One of the participants explains her role in a collaborative project between her American freshmen non-science major students and similar students from Oaxaca, Mexico. Studying one's "ecological footprint" allows people to share opinions, but in science, opinions need to be backed up by facts:
Another group of participants developed a case about hemp and marijuana genetic differences, and present the data from their case about a man in trouble with the authorities for selling something that may not be hemp. What does the evidence say? What has happened to give these results? Is it some hybridization, or just two kinds of leaves getting mixed in one sample?
Science is messy like this, and often only able to make provisional statements. But new data can suggest new questions and explorations, and this iterative process is what is important.
Collaboration
Throughout the SCOPE workshop there are numerous opportunities for collaboration. Like scientists, SCOPE participants collaborate to plan, to build new experiments and resources, to react to earlier ideas, and to build collective understandings.
In the following clip, Dr. Waterman gets participants to organize their information about what they already know about the science behind the flu, and what they want to know. While they are modeling a kind of activity that the undergraduates will be doing, Dr. Waterman encourages them to answer as themselves. In other words, not to fake the kind of collaboration they want to see, but to actually engage in this sharing process as they are.
Early in the workshop, participants collaborate to generate at least one new resource for the influenza problem space.
Later, participants are given large chunks of time to come up with their own example problem spaces and resource collections.
Often, the collaboration helps participants to come to a common understanding of what's important, either scientifically or pedagogically. For instance, one participant asked about the importance of undergraduates understanding her topic:
Similar collaborative sense-making happens when participants think about context and appropriateness of their cases. Who would the unit be good for?
OER and Resources
The SCOPE workshop introduces the teacher participants to a number of tools. Some of these are pedagogical tools like Problem Spaces, mentioned above. Other tools are science tools, like bioinformatics databases, and gene sequencing tools and methods.
In addition, SCOPE participants learned about open educational resources. As with the other tools, participants learned about what OER means, how the OER field has developed, what the process of using OER looks like, and tips for engaging with OER.
You have already seen an example of SCOPE using OER tools (OER Commons) to find a suitable case to introduce a science theme. But OER are not just given as examples at the beginning of the teaching process at SCOPE, or in the undergraduate classroom. Instead, they often appear throughout an exploration of a topic, as many of the resources in a "problem space" can be OER materials.
Furthermore, the products of the SCOPE workshop, collaboratively-produced cases, may themselves become open educational resources given back to the science education community. Perhaps the entire case or problem space will be shared, or perhaps it will be just a data set, or a presentation, an illustration, or an outline.
Many times during the workshop, as participants explore their investigations, resources are shared and requested. Questions like "Do you have a worksheet for that?" or "Do you have a rubric?" are common.
Themes coming together
It is important to realize that OER are not just handy materials that can be used freely. Instead, OER implies a method of interacting with educational materials that mirrors what is known about good science and good teaching. Interacting with OER is an iterative, cyclical process, much as science is interative and provisional. Like good teaching, OER is responsive to context. There is not one perfect case or illustration for a particular scientific subject; much depends on the students, the educational context and goals, even the setting of the class. And like science, OER is a collaborative process, building on the work of people who have come before, and contributing back to the community for feedback and further adaptation.
In a SCOPE workshop, all these themes would be intertwined. Modeling practice itself opens opportunities for collaboration, for communal sense-making. One person's request for resources allows another to introduce materials and tools and spark even newer ideas.
For More Information
The recent SCOPE conference in Atlanta (January 2009)
Unless specified otherwise, contributions to the OER Commons Wiki are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share-Alike License
The OER Commons Wiki is a project of The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management (ISKME)
