2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Cell and molecular biology courses often focus on memorization of biological facts using traditional lecture approaches. The disconnect between typical approaches to teaching such courses and the larger goals of engineering education has the potential to reduce student learning and motivation in an important core course. Active pedagogical techniques and flipped course delivery have been shown to be more effective than traditional lectures. In addition, both of these solutions are relatively accessible to instructors with limited time to engage in course design or redesign.

With the goal of improving content learning and increasing student motivation for learning cell and molecular biology, we revised the instructional design for a junior-level cell and molecular biology course for BME students. The first change was the integration of Problem Solving Studio (PSS) into three to five class sessions. PSS is a student apprenticeship learning model, where small groups of students solve open-ended problem sets with facilitation by an instructor. While PSS has been shown to increase student motivation and learning over a semester, changes in these parameters have not been measured in semesters before and after its implementation. PSS is also frequently used in courses focused on math concepts, but it also has the potential to increase student learning and motivation in a cell and molecular biology course for engineering students.

In order to assess student learning of concepts and motivation, student data is being collected through pre- and post-course assessments: a cell and molecular biology concept inventory (CI) and responses to a survey on motivation, along with exam grades and demographic information. In this preliminary analysis, we asked two research questions: RQ1. Does student learning increase over the semester, regardless of class type? RQ2. Does the class type (PSS or no PSS) affect CI scores in this course? Using Classical Test Theory and two-way ANOVA, we determined that student learning does increase over the semester regardless of class type. However, we were unable to show that class type affects CI scores.