Mississippi Course Redesign InitiativeDepartment of Biological Sciences

Mary Celeste Reese

The Replacement Model:Plants and Humans

Animal Biology

Plants and Humans and Animal Biology are the most popular non-majors science courses at MSU.

Because of constraints, a bottleneck typically occurs.

3 primary factors contribute to bottleneck:1.Lack of wet lab space. 2.Lack of large lecture halls.3.Lack of resources to hire additional

instructors. Finally, there is a lack of interactive learning

Each semester, ~200 students enroll in each course.

2 conventional lectures are delivered weekly for 50 minutes each.

Students acquire notes through PowerPoint slides.

Labs meet once per week for 2 hours and involve watching videos and performing simple lab exercises.

To reduce the bottleneck ◦ How? By reducing the number of lectures per week to

1 but keeping 2 sections.◦ Enrollment can be doubled.◦ We converted wet labs to virtual labs.◦ Students’ lab time spent in open-schedule, emporium-

style computer labs staffed by GTA’s to assist them. To create a more interactive course and inspire

life-long learning in the sciences.◦ How? In-class time spent in active-learning exercises

like case studies and group discussions.◦ Course content delivered through Blackboard.

Currently, we are running one in-class section per week.◦ In class time is used to do application-type

exercises Virtual labs are up and running: students

complete a virtual lab exercise (created by publishing company) delivered through Blackboard.

Students then take a quiz on the completed lab assignment at a designated time in a computer lab.

Grant idea seemed the perfect fit for the issues we were facing in our 2 non-majors courses: the bottleneck and limited lab space.

Enrollment in the courses was completely dependent on these factors.

Also, we saw an opportunity to create more interactive and engaging science courses.

Faculty Support:◦ Department head saw this grant as a way to

alleviate the issues we were facing.◦ Tenure-track faculty reviewed our grant proposal

prior to submission. All were onboard.

A newly formed peer-teaching committee has been formed.

Through the action of this committee, I hope to show colleagues the benefits of our redesign.

Initially, some administrators (and advisors in other departments) had a difficult time with the class schedule format.◦ Why is class meeting once per week?◦ Why are labs meeting for 25 minute intervals?

With some explanation about the redesign’s attributes, specifically its cost effectiveness, those administrators are not asking questions anymore.

“Support” has been positive. Because we were able to increase

enrollment at no additional costs, admin were happy.

Currently, a committee has been formed by our college to look at ways departments can cut instructional costs ◦ = NCAT

Our redesign has recently gained attention with increasing budget cuts.