Teaming up to re-imagine large-class education: Cross-discipline and course cases with in-class student group work and innovative immediate feedback assessment
Teaming up to re-imagine large-class education: Cross-discipline and course cases with in-class student group work and innovative immediate feedback assessment
“This project allowed us to successfully develop a novel large-class teaching model that is broadly transferable and allows instructors to readily introduce active learning and student teamwork into traditional lecture-based courses.”
Description
Our goal was to develop and assess a novel cross-disciplinary and interactive model for teaching large classes. Specifically, we created video case studies with a storytelling arc that spanned three disciplines in biology. These were used in three foundational courses: BIO130H, PSL301H, and HMB200H (yearly enrollment: 3500). Students viewed the videos, and once in class, worked in small groups to answer questions that emphasized key concepts and their real-world application. Teaching assistants facilitated group discussions and relayed areas of confusion to the instructor. The same videos were used in each course with additional readings/videos included for course-specific relevance. We predicted that key concepts would be reinforced as students revisited the cases in subsequent courses.
A complementary goal of the project was the further development, testing and use of Team Up! in our large in-person classes. Team Up! (originally designed for online group work) allows students to form groups and submit group answers. The app provides immediate feedback: groups got full marks if they selected the correct answer on the first try and partial marks with subsequent attempts.
This project allowed us to successfully develop a novel large-class teaching model that is broadly transferable and allows instructors to readily introduce active learning and student teamwork into traditional lecture-based courses.
Division(s)
Department of Cell and System Biology, Faculty of Arts and Science;
Human Biology Program, Faculty of Arts and Science;
Department of Physiology, Temerty Faculty of Medicine.
Project Lead(s)
Melody Neumann,
Franco Taverna,
Michelle French.
Year LEAF Granted
2017-2020
Funding Stream
Impact
LEAF Priority Area(s)
Experiential Learning
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Impact of the Project on Students
The teaching model with video case studies along with the app Team Up! have had overwhelming usage from students and faculty members.
Group 1: Cases and Team Up! Total number of student users in 2018-2020: 9851 students.
- BIO130H (Winter 2018-2020) Enrolment ~1700 per year
- HMB200H Introduction to Neuroscience (Winter 2020) enrollment 240
- HMB200H Introduction to Neuroscience (Winter 2019) enrollment 301
- HMB200 Introduction to Neuroscience (Summer 2019-2020) enrollment 80 per year
- PSL301H Human Physiology I (Winter 2018 to 2020) enrollment ~1100 per year
- PSL301H Human Physiology II (Summer 2018 to 2020) enrollment ~250 per year
Group 2: Team Up! (just enhanced version of Team Up!) Total number of confirmed unique student users 2018-2020: ~8425 students. These included St. George Campus’ Undergraduate Students as well as those from Professional Programs.
Undergraduate Courses:
- BCH210 Fall 2018; enrolment 1200 and Summer 2019; enrolment 200
- BCH311 Summer 2020; enrolment 80 BIO120 Fall 2019; enrolment ~1800
- CSB201 Fall 2018-present; enrolment 92 students/year
- PHY131 Fall 2019; enrolment 900
- PCL102 Spring 2019-2020; enrolment 500/year
- PHY207 Spring 2019-present; enrolment 250/year
- PSL201Y Fall/Winter 2019-2020; enrolment 150/year
- PSL300H tutorials Fall 2019; enrolment 1200 (not counted here as counted above)
- PSL301H tutorials Winter 2020; enrolment 1100 (not counted here as counted above)
- RSM435 Spring 2020-present; enrolment 40/year
- STA238 Spring 2020-present; enrolment 600/year
- PHT1101HF Critical Foundations of Physical Therapy UTM: WGS201 Fall 2019-20; enrolment 200/year
Professional Programs:
- PHM301 Pharmacotherapy 6: Hematology, Oncology & Immunotherapies; 234/year
- BIO205 Fall 2019; enrolment ~1000/year
- VCC101 Spring 2020; enrolment 375/year
Impact of the Project on Faculty
This project has not only introduced active learning into our own large courses, but also enhanced, and will continue to enhance, active learning in many other U of T courses.
Between Fall 2019 and Fall 2020, more than 150 courses incorporated Team Up! for active learning in either online or in-person classes. Team Up! uptake by instructors has occurred on all three University of Toronto campuses in multiple Faculties and Units including Arts & Science, Pharmacy, Rotman School of Management, and Medicine. In addition, more than 18,000 students have used Team Up! in at least one of their courses, representing student savings of more than $500,000 (compared with licensed alternatives) and thus an enhancement of the UofT student experience.
Resources Developed from the Project
This project resulted in the creation of two sets of videos and in-class activities. We successfully incorporated these into our courses in the final two years of the grant. Details are described below:
- Protein structure and function, Diabetes insipidus video, Pair-bonding video.
- Alternative mRNA splicing video.
Team Up! was further developed and enhanced to increase capacity, speed and ease of use for both students and instructors, specifically for very large, in-person classes (~1000 students). This included coding changes and moving to a central server. Team Up! is now fully released at the enterprise level for use by any instructor at any of the three U of T campuses.
Future Plans
The video case studies continue to be in use and expect to be used for the next several years. We also plan to continue to enhance our novel large-class teaching model in our own classes.
In addition, many of the early adopters of Team Up! continue to use the app in their classes, and uptake of the app across campuses and disciplines increased very quickly during the pandemic. Since Team Up! can be used in any discipline and in online or in-person classes (synchronously or asynchronously), we expect that Team Up! use will continue to grow, even when the majority of classes are mostly in-person again after the pandemic.
Partnership(s) Development
As a result of the roll-out of Team Up! to all 3 campuses, there has been enhanced partnerships with Academic Collaborative Technologies and Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions at the University of Toronto.
An additional outcome from our work on this LEAF project was that we were invited to describe our collaborative leadership approach in a case study that was included in a special issue entitled the Scholarship of Leading that was produced by a working group of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) (see case study #10: https://teaching.utoronto.ca/sotl/scholarship-of-leading/sl-introduction/).