Promoting Inquiry-Based Teaching in Laboratory Courses: Are We Meeting the Grade?

Over the past decade, repeated calls have been made to incorporate more active teaching and learning in undergraduate biology courses. The emphasis on inquiry-based teaching is especially important in laboratory courses, as these are the courses in which students are applying the process of science....

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Autores principales: Beck, Christopher, Butler, Amy, Burke da Silva, Karen
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Society for Cell Biology 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4152206/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25185228
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.13-12-0245
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author Beck, Christopher
Butler, Amy
Burke da Silva, Karen
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Butler, Amy
Burke da Silva, Karen
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description Over the past decade, repeated calls have been made to incorporate more active teaching and learning in undergraduate biology courses. The emphasis on inquiry-based teaching is especially important in laboratory courses, as these are the courses in which students are applying the process of science. To determine the current state of research on inquiry-based teaching in undergraduate biology laboratory courses, we reviewed the recent published literature on inquiry-based exercises. The majority of studies in our data set were in the subdisciplines of biochemistry, cell biology, developmental biology, genetics, and molecular biology. In addition, most exercises were guided inquiry, rather than open ended or research based. Almost 75% of the studies included assessment data, with two-thirds of these studies including multiple types of assessment data. However, few exercises were assessed in multiple courses or at multiple institutions. Furthermore, assessments were rarely based on published instruments. Although the results of the studies in our data set show a positive effect of inquiry-based teaching in biology laboratory courses on student learning gains, research that uses the same instrument across a range of courses and institutions is needed to determine whether these results can be generalized.
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spelling pubmed-41522062014-09-23 Promoting Inquiry-Based Teaching in Laboratory Courses: Are We Meeting the Grade? Beck, Christopher Butler, Amy Burke da Silva, Karen CBE Life Sci Educ General Articles Over the past decade, repeated calls have been made to incorporate more active teaching and learning in undergraduate biology courses. The emphasis on inquiry-based teaching is especially important in laboratory courses, as these are the courses in which students are applying the process of science. To determine the current state of research on inquiry-based teaching in undergraduate biology laboratory courses, we reviewed the recent published literature on inquiry-based exercises. The majority of studies in our data set were in the subdisciplines of biochemistry, cell biology, developmental biology, genetics, and molecular biology. In addition, most exercises were guided inquiry, rather than open ended or research based. Almost 75% of the studies included assessment data, with two-thirds of these studies including multiple types of assessment data. However, few exercises were assessed in multiple courses or at multiple institutions. Furthermore, assessments were rarely based on published instruments. Although the results of the studies in our data set show a positive effect of inquiry-based teaching in biology laboratory courses on student learning gains, research that uses the same instrument across a range of courses and institutions is needed to determine whether these results can be generalized. American Society for Cell Biology 2014 /pmc/articles/PMC4152206/ /pubmed/25185228 http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.13-12-0245 Text en © 2014 C. Beck et al.CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2014 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0). “ASCB®” and “The American Society for Cell Biology®” are registered trademarks of The American Society of Cell Biology.
spellingShingle General Articles
Beck, Christopher
Butler, Amy
Burke da Silva, Karen
Promoting Inquiry-Based Teaching in Laboratory Courses: Are We Meeting the Grade?
title Promoting Inquiry-Based Teaching in Laboratory Courses: Are We Meeting the Grade?
title_full Promoting Inquiry-Based Teaching in Laboratory Courses: Are We Meeting the Grade?
title_fullStr Promoting Inquiry-Based Teaching in Laboratory Courses: Are We Meeting the Grade?
title_full_unstemmed Promoting Inquiry-Based Teaching in Laboratory Courses: Are We Meeting the Grade?
title_short Promoting Inquiry-Based Teaching in Laboratory Courses: Are We Meeting the Grade?
title_sort promoting inquiry-based teaching in laboratory courses: are we meeting the grade?
topic General Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4152206/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25185228
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.13-12-0245
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