HIGHER-ORDER COGNITIVE SKILLS DEVELOPMENT AND RETENTION IN CELL BIOLOGY: WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN'T?

Cell biology is complex, yet at the foundation of a good understanding of any other discipline related to Biology. In our biology curriculum, 2 cell biology courses (Introductory Cell Molecular Biology-Y1; then Cell Biology-Y2) are mandatory for all students. These courses are meant to set the background knowledge, understanding and skills necessary for more advanced courses like Genetics, the Biology of Cancer, Physiology or Molecular Biology, to name just a few. While including the delivery of knowledge, our mandate is to develop critical thinking, analytic skills and more broadly to increase the scientific maturity of our students. In order to achieve this goal, we have developed a number of teaching tools and practices that have been tested over the past two years. The tools (in-class active learning activities or independent learning worksheets) were created to address specific skills (comprehension, analysis, evaluation, application and creation). We then assessed the level of performance of students at the end of each activity, as well as during 2 in-class exams. Three cohorts of students were included in this study (BIO196 2014 and 2015, BIO201 2015), for a total of 192 students. In the three cohorts, we consistently observed that the number of active learning activities completed was positively correlated with higher marks in exams. We then refined the analysis and realized that both pure learning questions and skill-oriented problems were more successfully answered when students had participated in more skill-oriented activities. We showed that the majority of students thought that these activities helped them to understand, memorize, and work more regularly, in addition to increasing their competencies. We also realized that creativity is the most challenging skill for students, potentially due to a lack of self-confidence, or need of being reassured. We now include self-evaluation grids and will analyze whether knowing where they stand helps students to think more creatively. Moreover, we are now following up students in their next year of study and we started to compute data on long-term retention of the competencies. We are confident that more interesting data will be ready to be presented at the time of the conference, as the semester will be over. Overall, we will in this report present a number of active learning activities that have been developed for undergraduate students in their Y1 and Y2, and report on their efficacy in terms of learning outcomes, skill development and long-term retention of competencies in cell biology.