Welcome to Episode four of the ID Corner podcast, where we talk about everything teaching and learning. Over the summer, I had the opportunity to attend the International Forum on Active Learning Classrooms held at the University of Minnesota as a first time attender. It was an enriching time, learning about current practice and an opportunity to meet others passionate about active learning. One of the contacts I made put me
in contact with my guest for today. Dr. Christian Schindler was a teaching specialist at the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry. So, Kristen, can you please share for our listeners a little bit about your role in the School of Dentistry? Sure. So I started in the School of Dentistry about three and a half years ago as a postdoc at first, and I was researching
bacteriophage. And through that, I had the opportunity to start teaching in the microbiology and immunology courses, specifically doing the component of the immunology then and from there, it just sort of grew. And I'm at the point where I'm directing the microbiology and immunology course for the dental students, a similar course for the dental hygiene students. And I also directed biochemistry course for the dental students. So I teach quite a bit. Awesome. Thank
you. Can you specifically describe the the course for which the this activity that we're going to talk about is for? Yeah. So this this activity is a final project for the microbiology and immunology course for the dental students. And so the way I inherited the course was that it had four fifty point multiple choice exams and that was the grading system for it. So there's about one in and students in the class. It's a really
big class for what I'm used to. And so getting those assessments graded quickly with feedback was a concern. I'm not the biggest fan of multiple choice exams, particularly basing an entire score off of that. So the first thing I did was to integrate some podcast assignments into it for a couple of years, where students listen to some Radiolab podcasts and talked about how scientific
communication happened relating to topics. And from there I decided that projects and different assignments like that, where students could really think about the content and apply it to different situations that could be relevant to their profession gave me the biggest understanding of their understanding of the material is presenting. So I moved the assessments for the course to one fifty point exam and everything else is project based assessment. Wow. Wow, that's awesome. So
you've mentioned the assignment a little bit. Can you can you give us some detail about it? Yeah. So I found this paper several years ago in the Journal of Microbiology and Bilel Biology Education and A.M. publication where a professor had started having his students create murder scenes from an infection with a microorganism. And so students worked in groups to create these these murder scenes, essentially these homicide scenes, and design different clues to point to the
identity of the microorganism responsible. And then they went through and sort of solved all of these crime scenes. And I thought, wow, what a great way for students to be exposed to a wider variety of microorganisms. Get some practice comparing and contrasting features of bacteria and viruses and fungal pathogens as well as parasites, and to really hone in on some differential diagnosis skills that they need as practicing
clinicians, since my students are dentists. So I took that paper and used it as sort of a foundation to to design the final project or my course. OK, so so this assignment, as you've described it, really meets some of the the important course objectives that you've got for for your students. Yeah. And I think it's a useful and sort of fun, low stress way to really get to those higher levels of doing taxonomy during
assessment without. Creating some really intricate problem for students to solve or some long essay to write or something like that, and there can be a group component and an individual component as well. Awesome. Yeah. So I have kind of the next question I had was why this type of assignment, which I think you've kind of been answering. I mean, any time, any time you can bring fun into it. I think it's a it's a great thing. How how have
students received this assignment? Does the group project and I know from my experience, group projects are kind of like, I don't want to do a group project. So. So what's been your experience? Yeah. So I've only done it one year so far. Full disclosure, but it was much more successful than I anticipated, so that was really, really great. I actually only had one student comment negatively on the group aspect. So one person said group
projects are never a good idea. But that was the only negative feedback I got, which I was shocked. I expected a lot more pushback. One thing I did, I let the students choose their own groups. So I presented 11 different microorganisms that they could choose from. And the class was divided into two groups, worked on the same micro-organism and they could sign up then based on the five of us want to work together or hey, I'm really interested in this microorganism, who else is
interested in it? So the groups formed in both of those ways, sort of organically. We just used a live Google doc to do that. That was kind of fun watching students edit. Sure, sure. There are groups and things in real time. Would you do it the same way again? Just kind of let it happen organically? You know, I think I would because it
seemed to work. I haven't asked students if they preferred forming their group first and then picking a microbe or just sort of signing up for a microbe and seeing who else was interested in that. But that would be some interesting sort of feedback to get. And then another thing I did to to really make sure that the groups were functioning well together for the group portion because the group grade was worth about half of the project, was I incorporated self-evaluation
and peer evaluation into it. And I was really careful with the peer evaluation chunk. And I said, you know, you can earn up to five points and it's going to be an average of the scores you get from your other group members. And if your average score from the peer evaluations is under two point five, so essentially 50 percent, you don't get peer evaluation points. So I made it sort of your group members have to be satisfied, reasonably satisfied with your contributions to earn those
points. And everyone did earn them. But there was that range of evaluation points. So it just sort of up the stakes on you need to be involved in this component. Sure. And so that was five points out of their total score. Yeah. And I think. I can't actually remember off the top of my head, I believe the group component was worth 50. Yes, five points and then I think, yes, a total of 50
for the group. Yep. And then the the individual component where they actually went through and solved crime scenes was also worth fifty points. So you could earn half of the points for the entire project on your own, which is another way to sort of alleviate those groupware concerns. Yes. Yes. So this is in the context of the course. This
is a final project. What kinds of support or scaffolding did you provide the students before they get here, both in terms of the the activity, the content itself, but then also the peer to peer and group kind of dynamics, things like was it just here you go? Or so I made a document that sort of broke down. Here's a group component of this, and you earn your points in these ways. So the main component of earning points in the group project or the clues that you provided in your
crime scene. So sort of building out the crime scene for your classmates to solve the self and peer evaluation. And then you also had to provide the rest of the class with the information to solve the crime scene. Right. So you made the groups made a little ID card that had things like symptomology of the organism, whether it's a bacteria or virus, it's gram positive, gram
negative. Those types of informations, epidemiology, any vector associated with it, the sort of critical pieces of knowledge and then a sort of a fun, creative bit, I had them create a mug shot for their their perpetrator, if you will, as well. So there was very clear point values associated with all of those. And I tried to provide a clear description about what you needed to do to get to those point values and have an independent part was a little easier because it's
it's solving the crime scene. Right. You identify what the microorganism is that caused that crime scene and then give me a treatment option that's available in one way that that could have been prevented. So to bring in the treatment and prevention and I also showed them an example. So when we talked about it in class, I went, for an example, crime scene with them so they could have a general idea of what other people had done. Awesome. Awesome. What have you learned about
student learning through this activity? So in general, I'm still working on that, I guess is the best answer. I've actually started to do some research on this. I just got the IRB approval for an exemption for education related material. And I'm looking at the way this can these sorts of projects can impact student retention of the
general principles of microbiology. So because I've taught this course before without the project, I have control groups sort of one year post class, two years post class, and I just give them a short term question, multiple choice quiz about what I think our main concepts that I would like them to know long term. And then I'll do that with the groups that have done the crime scene project as a final project as well to see if it is enhancing their retention of the material. That sounds
really exciting. Yeah, on a lesser scale, just sort of the comments from the course were pretty positive. A lot of students said that it was a fun way to learn. They said that they liked seeing how creative their classmates were, particularly when they're in other rigorous, structured science courses. That doesn't that maybe don't give the outlet for creativity as much. So it gives them more of a glimpse into their classmates,
personalities and interests. And I had a few comments that said you should keep this around this group. So that was nice. Very cool. And I guess the last question that I've got for you related to this is, is there anything that you would change? So you've done this once. Yeah. Is there anything that you would change about the assignment and why? Yeah, so I think I would shrink the group size No. One, so I had groups of four or five this time. And one comment that I got
from a student would kind of stuck with me. They said, you know, with a group of five, we each sort of picked a certain aspect of this microorganism to research and tackle. And I didn't really feel like I learned much about the microbe as a whole. And so I think that limiting the group size, you would get more of an overview because you'd be more in tune with different components of it. And it would also give me the opportunity to increase the number of microorganisms in the project itself.
So we had 11 last year, which was a decent number, but I'd like to get in more that have more closely related symptomology so it can be a little bit more difficult to discern them. You have to pay attention to a little bit more. And I also wish that students incorporated more sort of diagnostic tests into their clues. So I was hoping for here's a picture of a gel from a PCR reaction or something along those lines. So I was thinking
about scaffolding. I want this many clues about symptoms, a maximum of this, many clues about epidemiology to really make it have more aspects of the disease represented in the crime scenes. So those are the sort of two things that I am working on refining a little bit. That sounds very cool. And I think as you're describing it, the the
changes one will make the the exercise more. I mean, you mentioned more difficult, but at the same time hopefully provide a greater opportunity for the students to learn more detailed information. So thank you for sharing that. One thing that you mentioned earlier that kind of piqued my interest also is that you said you mentioned that you've done podcasting and I don't
have any scripted questions about that. But I would be interested to hear how when I think about biology, immunology and podcasts, that they're not two things that I would immediately put together. And so that that sounds very interesting to me. Can you share a little bit about that? Sure. So I have always been a fan of the Radiolab podcast. I think that they're very interesting and they're presented really well in an engaging way. And a lot of the topics of their podcasts have to do
with microorganisms. I talk about in microbiology concepts. I talk about in microbiology and immunology. So the way that those assignments work is I pick five different Radiolab podcasts that relate to content we're talking about in class, and students have to pick two out of the five to listen to throughout the semester. And so they have a little bit of control to pick information
that's most interesting to them. Or I think a lot of times it might boil down to I don't have a lot else going on this week because they can get sort of swamped with exams. But that's that's fine, too. And what they do is they listen to it. And then I ask them to write just a short one to two page response to me about how did this podcast relate to content we covered in class? What did you like about how these scientific concepts were presented?
Did you think that the podcast did a good job talking to a broad audience about these concepts? So so people who might not have a strong biology background or other type of scientific background, and how do you envision using these sorts of communication methods with your patients in the future? So how can you use this as a springboard for talking about scientific concepts with your patient? Was maybe an accountant or an electrician? OK, very cool. Have you ever so you're having the
students evaluate the podcasts? Yeah. OK, have you considered having them create podcasts? I have. Um, and so right now I don't have an assignment where students specifically have to create a podcast in the biochemistry course I direct their final project is to choose a disease that affects the sort of craniofacial region and explain the biological basis of that disease and its diagnosis
and treatment to. A patient in a way that most patients can understand, and I let the medium of that wide open, so I have had students submit podcasts to me through that assignment and they're just always really fantastic. They made them really quirky or sort of funny things. Some of them even pick their own introduction music. I had one student who interviewed his brother as a guest
on the podcast for his final assignment. So those are those go well, I just haven't dreamed up a project yet where the only podcast should be submitted. Sure, sure. How have you thought about and how do you go about assessing? So if there's if there's an option for a podcast or whatever, how does how does the assessment of that differ from an exam or a paper or how have you have you worked that into into that. Right. So for that particular project, everyone is submitting some
sort of information piece. So I have had everything from the podcast to children's books to pamphlets you would pick up at a doctor's office to a recorded PowerPoint presentation. Someone did a YouTube video. And so I try and take the creativity out of it as much as possible because those sorts of projects always intimidated me when I was in school. I don't think of myself as a particularly creative person. I have like zero
drawing abilities. So what I do is I make really detailed rubrics about this is what I want you to tell me about the biological basis of the disease. This is what I want you to tell me about the treatment of the disease. This is what I want you to tell me about the diagnosis. And so the point values are for the science itself, for people that like sound information and then appoint value for. Did you communicate this to a broad audience?
Right. So if you're trying to talk to a kid about cavities, is this accessible for someone who's 10 years old or if you're trying to talk about oropharyngeal cancer or are you talking to someone who's an electrician in a way that they understand and don't feel overwhelmed about it? So the medium is is left to the students to show their creativity and they're not judged or graded on
that component. Awesome. Thank you. You really highlighted how the objectives, the the things that you want the students to demonstrate really are key and that the the medium isn't as important in that in the or. Exactly. And that can, I think, increase the fun of the project and decrease the
stress as well. And that's a big thing that I want to do, is allow students to communicate to me how they've learned and progressed throughout the semester in a way that they're comfortable with because most people just aren't comfortable with exams. Right. They're high stress environments. So if you can do it in a fun way, why not? And there's one agreed. It is not a catalogue or a stack of. Yeah, just scantron sheets or whatever. Right. It's really get a sense of the personality
of each student. And I feel more connected to my classes after these projects. I think that would resonate with a lot of a lot of people. You know, we're we're always talking about sense of belonging and student engagement and retention and all of those things. But I think what it comes down to is that that connection between the instructor and the student, you hit the nail on the head. So thank you. Of course. Well, I really want to thank you for your time and your
willingness to be interviewed. And it was awesome to be able to talk with you today. So we're going to take a quick break and then I'll be right back to share some closing thoughts about the interview. Welcome back. I think that there are three key ideas that we can take away from Kristen's example. First, learning objectives are key. All of the work that students did was informed by the learning goals that Christine set for her class.
Christine had a clear idea about the skills she wanted the students to develop and then identified an activity to meet those goals. Second, the medium doesn't matter. The creative media forms that students use to complete projects were secondary to the objectives and skills that the students were working toward. Not requiring a specific format or medium provides choice for the students in representing what they know. Lastly, the option for creativity benefited both student
and teacher. The students were able to participate in a fun activity. They were able to bring more of their authentic selves into the project. The creativity also benefited the teacher in not having to grade lengthy papers or exams. I hope that this interview has inspired you to consider a project based approach in your teaching. I hope to have Christian back in the future to discuss the results of her research on the effects of her
project based approach. My guess is that her students will retain the information better through the project versus exams. Thank you for listening. If you do not already, please subscribe to the podcast. The Corner podcast is available on Apple podcast, Google Play podcast and Spotify notes. Resources and episode transcripts are also available on my blog at staff Lawrence Dunedoo. Rex Jay, have a great day.