Adv Physiol Educ 37: 303–315, 2013;
doi:10.1152/advan.00082.2012.
How We Teach
A set of vertically integrated inquiry-based practical curricula that develop
scientific thinking skills for large cohorts of undergraduate students
Kirsten Zimbardi,1 Andrea Bugarcic,1,2 Kay Colthorpe,1 Jonathan P. Good,3 and Lesley J. Lluka1
1
School of Biomedical Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; 2Institute for Molecular
Bioscience, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; and 3Department of Natural Sciences, Daemen
College, Amherst, New York
Submitted 6 June 2012; accepted in final form 28 September 2013
scientific reasoning; laboratory teaching; written communication
skills; student autonomy; student-directed research
WITHIN AN INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE focusing higher education on the
task of creating a 21st century workforce who are able to deal with
novel, complex, unstructured problems, there is increasing emphasis on the specific pedagogies that will adequately prepare
students to meet those expectations. This has caused many science
educators to move toward inquiry-based curricula, which are
characterized by engaging students in “...identifying questions,
attending to evidence, identifying patterns, making controlled
comparisons, interpreting increasingly complex data, supporting
claims, and drawing justified conclusions” (15). Inquiry-based
curricula have been proposed to help students develop these sorts
of advanced thinking skills in tertiary science education in general
Address for reprint requests and other correspondence: K. Zimbardi, School
of Biomedical Science, Univ. of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Queensland,
Australia (e-mail: [email protected]).
(11) and in physiology education in particular (17). Thus, inquiry
curricula have been increasingly used in science education over
the last 30 yr to teach students “how to think like scientists” (7).
Inquiry-based curricula have been shown to produce superior learning outcomes compared with traditional curricula (4,
6, 16). However, differences in the contexts and goals of the
classroom and research laboratories complicate the translation
of the research experience from practicing science as a scientist
to the classroom context of practicing science as a student (10).
Indeed, the degree of guidance and ownership provided to
students during inquiry-based classes has been shown to have
a significant impact on the learning outcomes that students
achieve (14). Furthermore, students who have become accustomed to, and quite successful in, more traditional curricula
often struggle when they first encounter inquiry-based curricula and assessment at the tertiary level (20). Therefore, this
study explores the experiences of undergraduate students undertaking a series of vertically integrated practical curricula in
biomedical science at the University of Queensland (Brisbane,
Queensland, Australia), with a specific focus on the aspects of
the design and implementation of these curricula that students
perceived as having the largest impact on their learning of
disciplinary skills and content.
In 2006, we undertook an extensive review of the curricula
across the entire Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree (22). Based on
international recommendations for reform in science education (3,
18), we designed a series of vertically integrated courses that used
an inquiry-based approach to the practical curricula explicitly
aimed to help students develop skills in scientific thinking. Within
our context, the key learning goals were for students to develop
increasingly advanced skills in scientific thinking and scientific
communication by working with increasing ownership of their
research questions and autonomy over their research projects.
Here, we report an investigation of the specific aspects of the
curricula that students reported as having the largest impact on
their learning. Our findings provide important implications for
science educators who are attempting to develop inquiry-based
curricula that promote student learning of a range of disciplinaryspecific skills and content.
METHODS
Institutional and Degree Contexts
This study was conducted at a large, research-intensive Australian
university and was approved by the institutional ethical review board.
The three semester-length (13 wk) courses described in this study are
the first- and second-level courses required for students who want to
major in biomedical science (specializing in physiology, pharmacology, neuroscience, or molecular and cellular biology). Typically,
1043-4046/13 Copyright © 2013 The American Physiological Society
303
Downloaded from http://advan.physiology.org/ by 10.220.32.246 on June 15, 2017
Zimbardi K, Bugarcic A, Colthorpe K, Good JP, Lluka LJ. A set
of vertically integrated inquiry-based practical curricula that develop
scientific thinking skills for large cohorts of undergraduate students. Adv
Physiol Educ 37: 303–315, 2013; doi:10.1152/advan.00082.2012.—
Science graduates require critical thinking skills to deal with the
complex problems they will face in their 21st century workplaces.
Inquiry-based curricula can provide students with the opportunities to
develop such critical thinking skills; however, evidence suggests that
an inappropriate level of autonomy provided to underprepared students may not only be daunting to students but also detrimental to
their learning. After a major review of the Bachelor of Science, we
developed, implemented, and evaluated a series of three vertically
integrated courses with inquiry-style laboratory practicals for earlystage undergraduate students in biomedical science. These practical
curricula were designed so that students would work with increasing
autonomy and ownership of their research projects to develop increasingly advanced scientific thinking and communication skills. Students
undertaking the first iteration of these three vertically integrated
courses reported learning gains in course content as well as skills in
scientific writing, hypothesis construction, experimental design, data
analysis, and interpreting results. Students also demonstrated increasing skills in both hypothesis formulation and communication of findings as a result of participating in the inquiry-based curricula and
completing the associated practical assessment tasks. Here, we report
the specific aspects of the curricula that students reported as having
the greatest impact on their learning and the particular elements of
hypothesis formulation and communication of findings that were more
challenging for students to master. These findings provide important
implications for science educators concerned with designing curricula
to promote scientific thinking and communication skills alongside
content acquisition.
How We Teach
304
INQUIRY PRACTICALS DEVELOP SCIENTIFIC THINKING SKILLS
Curricular Context
Overall, course 1, “Cells to Organisms,” sets the scene for students
with fundamental concepts around how cells interact to perform
complex tissue and organ functions in an organism, with a particular
focus on the human body and other higher organisms. Key concepts
include basic cellular transport, signaling mechanisms, and an understanding of how structure and function are interrelated in organ
systems. Course 2, “Integrative Cell and Tissue Biology,” pulls
students deeper into cellular and molecular physiology, with a specific
focus on how cells associate and interact to fulfill their normal
functions in tissues and organs of the human body. Key topics include
epithelial, neuronal, muscle, endocrine, and immune function. Course
3, “Systems Physiology,” builds on this knowledge by extending
students’ understanding of human physiology to the level of integrated systems, focusing on integration at the system, organ, cell, and
molecular levels. Key knowledge areas include the peripheral and
central nervous systems, gastrointestinal tract, renal system and water
balance, respiratory system, cardiovascular system, metabolic endocrinology, and glucose homeostasis. All three courses include 13 wk
of three 1-h lectures/wk. Course 1 has fortnightly peer-assisted study
sessions that have a tutorial-like format, which are optional for
students; there are no such tutorials for courses 2 and 3. All three
courses have five or six 3-h practical classes throughout the semester,
during which students undertake laboratory experiments. Learning
goals for the practicals include the ability to design a well-controlled
experiment, collect, analyze, and critically evaluate data, integrate this
with primary research literature to reach appropriate conclusions, and
convey this in oral and written forms of scientific communication.
Design and Implementation of Vertically Integrated, Inquiry-Based
Practical Curricula
The model of vertical integration of inquiry-based practical curricula described here has been cited in a nation-wide investigation of
the inquiry-based teaching approaches as a representative case study
of how the undergraduate curriculum can be redesigned for a focus on
inquiry-based learning (8). The design of the vertical integration was
guided by the research skills framework developed by Willison and
O’Regan (24), which has been successfully adapted for curricula and
assessment design in a range of disciplines (23). Specifically, this
framework uses a rubric to aid curriculum designers in detailing the
specific curricular and learning objectives that are considered to be
important in a research-based curriculum across the incremental levels
of development that are appropriate to a particular educational context. Our key curricular and learning objectives were for students to
develop increasingly advanced skills in scientific thinking and scientific communication and to work with increasing ownership of their
research questions and autonomy over their research projects, as
shown in Table 1 and detailed below.
Course 1. The learning goals for the practicals in course 1 included
becoming aware of the processes that scientists use to discover and
verify new knowledge in biology, specifically observation-based discovery and the reproducible testing of explanations through hypothesis-driven inquiry, as well as developing competency in basic biological laboratory techniques.
Practicals consist of five classes of 3 h each, as shown in Table 2.
The first class introduces students to the course, where students
perform an animal dissection to gain an overview all of the systems
they will investigate during the semester and to learn the key scientific
and technical skills that they will be using in the remaining practicals.
Each of the next three classes explicitly require students to design and
undertake an experiment to gather evidence that they then apply to a
simple case study. The final practical class provides students with the
opportunity to contrast the animal systems they have been previously
investigating with a plant-based investigation.
Students are guided through the practicals by an interactive online
laboratory manual built using LabTutor software (AD Instruments),
which is used to scaffold students through the basic structure of the
scientific article genre. Specifically, the LabTutor system presents
students with background information and allows students to enter
responses to open-ended questions and choose from multiple-choice
questions to develop the hypotheses, methods, results, and discussion
sections of the final report. The LabTutor system is also integrated
with the PowerLab data-acquisition system (AD Instruments) and
Chart software (AD Instruments) to embed physiological data recorded live into student reports. Students submit an individual report
48 h after each practical class; reports are assessed by their assigned
practical class teaching assistant, who provides written feedback at
least 5 days before the next practical class.
Course 2. Learning goals for the practicals in course 2 include
extending students’ skills in developing research questions, designing
and conducting experiments, and developing skills in statistically
analyzing data, interpreting results, and writing scientific proposals
and reports.
Practicals consist of two projects, each consisting of three 3-h
classes (Table 2). During the first project, students design and conduct
Advances in Physiology Education • doi:10.1152/advan.00082.2012 • http://advan.physiology.org
Downloaded from http://advan.physiology.org/ by 10.220.32.246 on June 15, 2017
students undertake course 1 in the second semester of their first year
and courses 2 and 3 in the first and second semesters of their second
year, respectively. Course 1 is a recommended prerequisite for course
2, and course 2 is a recommended prerequisite for course 3.
Each course has a designated practical coordinator (faculty member) who oversees the laboratory classes and their associated assessment as part of the teaching load within their academic role. Practical
coordinators are responsible for training of the teaching assistants,
organization of the classes, liaising with technical staff, and teaching
into the practical classes. During the period of this study, there were
775, 415, and 380 students enrolled in courses 1, 2, and 3, respectively. Each of the teaching laboratory spaces can accommodate
60 –96 students, so each course cohort of students is divided into 6 – 8
practical groups of 60 –96 students. We maintain a teaching staff to
student ratio of 1:12, so each practical group has 5– 8 teaching
assistants, who mentor the same 12 students for the entire semester.
Students form self-selected groups of 3– 6 students/group in the first
practical class in each course and are actively encouraged to remain in
these groups, with the same teaching assistant (referred to as “tutors”
by the students) for all of the remaining classes. This allows teaching
assistants to provide consistent mentoring and feedback to students
across multiple assessment items and as the scaffolding is reduced
within courses. Several of the teaching assistants provide classes for
more than one practical group, so teaching teams consist of 15–22
teaching assistants across the 3 courses; occasionally, teaching assistants also taught into more than one of the three courses, providing an
excellent additional source of vertical integration for both the teaching
teams and students. Importantly, this demonstrates that the inquirybased curricula described in this report are scalable to very large
cohorts.
Just over half of the students taking these three courses were
enrolled in a 3-yr BSc degree or a 4-yr dual degree combining the BSc
degree with another degree. Another 20% of the students were
enrolled in the Bachelor of Biomedical Science (4-yr research-focused
program), and 12% of the students were enrolled in a medical program
(6-yr accelerated BSc/Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery
program). The remaining students were enrolled in a large range of
specialty and applied science degrees. The majority of students
undertaking these degrees enter university straight after secondary
school, with mid- to high-range university entry scores. By graduation, all of these students are expected to have learned to think and
communicate like scientists (22). A review of the BSc degree led to
recommendations that “...students should have: (i) the opportunity to
be critical thinkers who value the opportunity for open-ended inquiry
and (ii) who have some insight into how scientific knowledge is
generated” (22), and this prompted a move to inquiry-based curricula.
How We Teach
INQUIRY PRACTICALS DEVELOP SCIENTIFIC THINKING SKILLS
305
Table 1. Vertical integration of the curricula objectives (student autonomy and ownership) and learning objectives (skill
development) across the three inquiry-based practical curricula
Vertical Progression
Course code and name
Course 1
Course 2
Course 3
BIOM2011: Integrative Cell and
Tissue Biology
Year 2, semester 1
Two blocks of three 3-h classes
BIOM2012: Systems
Physiology
Year 2, semester 2
One block of five 3-h
classes
One draft of hypotheses and
methods, one proposal
presentation, and one
report
Increase
Assessment
Increase in complexity
Three reports
Two experimental plans, two
proposals, and two reports (1
report/module)
Curricular objectives
Autonomy
Increase
LabTutor provides specific
scaffolding for each
stage of the experiment
from hypothesis to
discussion. Teaching
assistants provide
progressively less
guidance to students
across the semester.
Manuals for the experimental
paradigm and example
research questions and
experiments are provided.
Teaching assistants provide
guidance throughout, but
students are expected to be
working autonomously in the
final class of each block.
Increase
There are four set topics
for which students
begin by choosing a
hypothesis from a set of
examples and end with
designing their own
method and hypothesis.
There are two broad fields for
which students can design
their own experiment or
choose from a set of example
experiments.
Increase in complexity
Hypothesis generation and
experimental design are
emphasized.
Strategic questions
scaffold the entire
report writing process.
Detailing the methods, statistical
analysis, and interpretation of
results.
Formal proposals and formal
reports are completed.
Students are provided
guidelines and lectorials. The
emphasis is on genre
conventions for methods and
results.
Student ownership of
research question
Learning objectives
Scientific process
Scientific communication
Reduction of scaffolding
and more advanced
aspects of scientific
writing.
Skill-building experiments
in the first two classes are
performed. Students use
primary literature to
develop research
questions and
experiments. Teaching
assistants provide
guidance throughout, but
students are expected to
be working autonomously
for the second half of
semester.
Students are given freedom
to investigate any aspect
of cardiovascular,
respiratory, renal, and
metabolic physiology in
response to a wide range
of perturbations.
Integration of experimental
design and findings with.
primary literature
Verbal proposals and formal
reports are completed.
The emphasis is on the
integration of primary
literature in the
introduction, methods,
and discussion.
Students typically undertake course 1 in the second semester of their first year and courses 2 and 3 in the first and second semesters of their second year,
respectively.
experiments on double-pithed toads with excised hearts to investigate
the impact of one or two factors from a large range of options on
cardiovascular parameters. For the second practical project, the majority of students investigate skeletal muscle physiology, where students are the subjects for their own experiments using electromyography (EMG) recordings to examine the impact of one or two factors,
from a long list of options, on the relationships between electrical and
mechanical activity of human skeletal muscles. Instead of the EMG
experiments, a small subset of students who were undertaking the
research-focused Bachelor of Biomedical Science investigated the
regulation of macropinocytosis using a cell culture paradigm (5).
As shown in Table 2, each project module begins with a 3-h
skill-building class where students gain hands-on experience with the
experimental paradigm and develop their experimental design. Students are then provided with a 1-h interactive lecture (lectorial) with
the practical coordinator and a 1.5-h practical class with their teaching
assistants. For the first module, these short classes are used to guide
students through the data-analysis conventions and procedures using
their pilot data from the first class. In the second module, the 1-h
lectorial and 1.5-h practical class are used to guide students through
the conventions and expectations for writing scientific papers using
feedback on their marked reports from the first module. Each project
module then ends with a 3-h class in which students perform the
experiment they have designed and collect the data.
During each module, students are assessed on the following three
written tasks: 1) their experimental design developed as a group
during the first class of each module; 2) a group proposal including an
introduction, hypothesis, and refined methods section completed before the final class of each module; and 3) an individual report in the
form of a scientific journal article due 1 wk after the final class of each
module. Each of the three assessment items within a project module
are linked, so that feedback on each assessment is directly relevant to
subsequent assessments.
Course 3. In the course 3 practicals, students design and conduct a
larger-scale semester-long clinical experiment to achieve learning
goals of collaborating on a large scale, developing more complex
experimental designs, and thus conducting more advanced experiments, acquiring and analyzing larger sets of quantitative data as well
as interpreting their findings in relation to published literature at a
broader and more indepth level than in course 2.
As shown in Table 2, all five 3-h practical classes in course 3
contribute to one major project, designed and conducted by the students,
Advances in Physiology Education • doi:10.1152/advan.00082.2012 • http://advan.physiology.org
Downloaded from http://advan.physiology.org/ by 10.220.32.246 on June 15, 2017
Timing
Project duration
BIOL1040: Cells to
Organisms
Year 1, semester 2
Six 3-h classes
How We Teach
306
INQUIRY PRACTICALS DEVELOP SCIENTIFIC THINKING SKILLS
Table 2. Summary of the organization of the practical component of the three consecutive, vertically integrated courses
Practical 1
Practical 2
Practical 3
Practical 4
Practical 5
Practical 6
Course 1
Toad dissection
experiment
Osmosis experiment
Action potential
experiment
Pilot experiments on toad
heart (skill building
and experimental
planning) (module 1)
Data analysis lectorial
and computer class
(module 1)
Experimental data
collection
(module 1)
Skeletal muscle
experiment
Plant physiology
experiment
N/A
Writing scientific reports
lectorial and feedback
class (module 2)
Experimental data
collection
(module 2)
Experiment: data
collection (part 2)
N/A
Course 2
Pilot experiments on
human skeletal
muscle (skill
building and
experimental
planning) (module 2)
Course 3
Structured experiments
on oxygen and
energy use during
exercise (skill
building)
Oral presentation
of student
experimental
proposals
Experimental data
collection (part 1)
Students undertake five separate 3-h practicals in course 1, there are two modules of three 3-h classes in course 2, and there is one extended series that takes
place across five 3-h classes in course 3. Based on student feedback, the final course was later modified to include a sixth class on data analysis. N/A, not
applicable.
investigating the integrated functions of several physiological systems
involved in restoring homeostasis in response to a perturbation (usually
exercise). The project begins with two skill-building classes where students gain hands-on experience with the equipment available for use in
their project. After completion of the second skill-building class, each
research group collaboratively develops a research question and drafts a
hypothesis and the methodology to examine their research question.
During the third practical class, each group formally presents their research proposal to their peers in an oral presentation. At the end of this
class, one of the presented proposals is selected by the students by a
majority vote for the whole practical group in a class (60 –72 students) to
perform for the remaining two practical classes. After the vote, a whole
class discussion of specific details of the experimental design is led by the
teaching assistants, so that the experimental design can be improved
when needed. Students conduct the chosen experiment in the final two
practical classes and pool the data from the whole class cohort, and each
student then independently analyzes the results and submits a written
report for the project.
Students are assessed on their draft hypotheses and methods, group
research proposals and presentations, and individual final report.
Support from teaching staff consists largely of advice and feedback on
the experimental design during the second and third classes and
suggestions for the analysis of results and presentation of findings as
data are collected in the final two classes. Overall, this means that in
course 3, students are much more reliant on peer support and making
their own decisions throughout the entire extended project than they
were in the previous two courses.
Specific Scaffolding for Skills in Scientific Thinking and Communication
As shown in Table 1 and described in detail above, students work
with increasing ownership of their research questions and autonomy
over their research projects to achieve the learning goals in developing
scientific thinking and communication skills as they progress throughout the three courses. Two specific outcomes of these learning goals
are the generation of appropriate scientific hypotheses and the appropriate analysis and representation of experimental results. Therefore,
in this study, we analyzed the quality of students’ hypotheses and
figure legends from reports submitted for all three courses, and the
vertical integration of the scaffolding of these specific aspects is
described in more detail below.
Hypothesis scaffolding. In the first practical of course 1, students
were provided with three hypotheses and asked to choose the most
appropriate one. For the subsequent three reports, students were
required to write their own hypotheses and were provided with
feedback by teaching assistants in class. In course 2, students were
expected to develop their own hypotheses and were provided with
feedback in each of the three assessment submissions: the experimental plan, the proposal, and the reports. In course 3, this scaffolding and
guidance were again reduced, with students developing their experimental proposals outside of class without tutor feedback; the hypothesis was also finalized by students independently after the completion
of their final experimental class.
Figure legend scaffolding. For the first report in course 1, figure
legends were not used. For the second and third reports, although
figure legends were not emphasized by teaching assistants or marked
in the reports, the LabTutor system did provide students with example
figure legends, which consisted of two statements. The first statement
summarized the scope of the figure, whereas the second statement
provided a description of the data presentation (Fig. 1A).
In course 2, students had two classes in which they were given
explicit instructions and feedback on how to write figure legends.
Again, an example figure legend was provided, which included a
description of the data presentation and relevant experimental conditions followed by a statement describing the statistical information
shown in the figure (Fig. 1B).
In course 3, all scaffolding was then removed, with students
completing the data analysis and figure legends for their reports after
their final practical class without tutor guidance. Instead of being
provided with specific examples of figure legends, in course 3,
students were prompted to go to the literature they were using for their
assignments to find examples to guide their figure legend writing.
Data Collection and Analysis
This study has taken both a snapshot and longitudinal approach to
the evaluation of the vertically integrated curricula. First, we analyzed
the course evaluations provided by the first cohort of students who
undertook each of these three courses to determine which aspects of
the curricular design had the greatest impact on student learning for
each of the four learning objectives shown in Table 1. Second, we
analyzed a sample of 21 students’ reports from all 3 courses to
investigate the learning gains in scientific thinking and communication achieved by students as they progressed through the vertically
integrated inquiry-based practical curricula.
Advances in Physiology Education • doi:10.1152/advan.00082.2012 • http://advan.physiology.org
Downloaded from http://advan.physiology.org/ by 10.220.32.246 on June 15, 2017
Structured experiments
on blood flow and
volume (skill building)
How We Teach
INQUIRY PRACTICALS DEVELOP SCIENTIFIC THINKING SKILLS
307
Fig. 1. Exemplar figure legends. Figure legends were provided to students as exemplars as
part of the scaffolding in course 1 (A) and
course 2 (B), showing only some aspects of the
five elements identified in the figure legends:
for A, scope and data presentation; and for B,
experimental information, data presentation,
and statistical information.
tasks impacted on learning), 2) hands-on experience (how gaining
practical experience impacted learning), 3) relatedness (how practical
task were related across practicals and to lectures), 4) scaffolding
(how guidance and scaffolds from the teaching assistants, practical
manuals, assessment criteria, etc. impacted learning), 5) autonomy
(how having ownership over the research questions and autonomy in
conducting the research projects impacted on learning), and 6) difficulty (how the degree of difficulty or ease of tasks impacted on
learning). Finally, in the third level of inductive analysis, comments
were classified as positive if students reported that the aspect of the
curricula had helped them to learn content knowledge or a particular
skill or negative if students reported that their learning of that aspect
was hindered by an aspect of the curriculum or could have been
greater if the curriculum was changed.
Data from student scientific reports. At the end of the second
semester in 2009, we randomly selected two classes of students in
course 3 and e-mailed each of the students to ask for informed consent
to use their assessment items for research purposes. Of the 27 students
who agreed, 21 students had completed the inaugural offering of
courses 1–3. These 21 students were representative of the cohorts for
each of the courses; Mann-Whitney U-tests for categorical and ordinal
data were used to determine that there were no significant differences
(P ⬎ 0.05) between the final course grades of this sample of students
and the cohort for courses 1, 2, and 3 or significant differences (P ⬎
0.05) based on sex or on whether they were domestic or international
students. For the inaugural offering of course 2, completion of the
second module and the associated assessment were not compulsory.
As only 5 of these 21 students submitted the second report for course
2, these second reports from course 2 were excluded from the
following analysis. Therefore, all three reports from course 1, the
report from the first module in course 2, and the report from course 3
were used for the following qualitative analysis.
The hypotheses and figure legends from each report were imported
into NVivo (QSR) and analysed by K. Zimbardi following the
step-by-step procedure for typological analysis of qualitative data
described by Hatch (12). Briefly, each of the hypotheses and figure
legends was inspected looking for the types of information and
statements that the authors, as researchers in physiology and pharmacology, expected to be included scientific hypotheses and figure
legends (namely, dependent and independent variables for hypotheses
as well as data presentation and statistical information for figure
legends). Across the entire data set, four different elements were
found in the hypotheses and five elements in the figure legends that
agreed with, and extended, the typology of statements the authors had
predicted would be present in the data. Each hypothesis was then
inspected for the presence or absence of each of the four elements:
1) dependent variables, 2) independent variables with 3) comparative
statements, and 4) context (see examples from student reports in
Fig. 2). Each figure legend was inspected for the presence or absence
Advances in Physiology Education • doi:10.1152/advan.00082.2012 • http://advan.physiology.org
Downloaded from http://advan.physiology.org/ by 10.220.32.246 on June 15, 2017
Data from course evaluations. Course evaluations were collected
as follows. For course 1, students were asked a series of reflective
questions at the end of their final practical assessment submission. For
this report, we analyzed the responses to the following questions:
“Which practical class was most helpful for your learning and why?”
and “Which practical class was least helpful for your learning and
why?” For courses 2 and 3, extensive online course evaluations were
conducted at the end of each semester through the institutional
teaching evaluations unit, and students were provided with a small
amount of course credit for completing the surveys (⬃1% of the
course grade). The responses to the following questions were included
in this analysis of the practical curricula: for course 2, “Please
comment on how the COURSE ACTIVITIES helped your learning”
(emphasis in original), and for both courses 2 and 3, “Please comment
on how the ASSIGNMENTS AND ASSESSMENTS helped your
learning” (emphasis in original), “What do you think are the strengths
of this course,” and “What improvements would you suggest in this
course?.”
Course evaluations were provided by only 149 of the 775 students
(19%) enrolled in course 1. In contrast, providing students with the
small reward of ⬃1% of the course grade elicited dramatic increases
in the response rates for courses 2 and 3, where 395 of the 415
students enrolled (95%) and 306 of the 380 students enrolled (81%)
completed the evaluations, respectively. Of this corpus of course
evaluations, comments about the practical curricula were provided by
140 students for course 1 (94% of respondents, 18% of the students
enrolled), 254 students for course 2 (64% of respondents, 61% of the
students enrolled), and 220 students for course 3 (72% of respondents,
58% of the students enrolled). All evaluations were deidentified
before further analysis so we were unable to match responses from
individual students across the three courses and have thus provided
snapshots of how the cohorts as a whole evaluated the inaugural
iterations of these curricula.
K. Zimbardi applied three levels of inductive thematic analysis to
the course evaluation data following the step-by-step procedure detailed by Hatch (12). Briefly, this involved reading and rereading the
entire data set, developing themes from the data to address the
research questions (which were “Wat do students report learning from
the practical curricula and how?”), comparing the themes to develop
hierarchical trees of related themes, looking for data that contradicted
the themes and revising and refining the themes based on this,
comparing subcategories within themes to further understand the
meaning of the themes, and comparing between themes to refine the
relationships between themes. In the first level of inductive analysis,
three major themes were found for what students reported learning
from the practical curricula (learning in general, learning content
knowledge, and learning skills). In the second level of inductive
analysis, six themes emerged from the data for how students learned
content and skills: 1) assessment (how completing the assessment
How We Teach
308
INQUIRY PRACTICALS DEVELOP SCIENTIFIC THINKING SKILLS
Fig. 2. Elements within student hypotheses.
Examples of student hypotheses from course
1 (A) and course 2 (B) are shown, illustrating
four elements identified in the hypotheses:
dependent variable, independent variable,
comparator statement, and context.
RESULTS
Course Evaluations
Students referred to learning in the general sense (186 comments), learning content knowledge (503 comments), and learning
skills (232 comments). Comments about learning in the general
sense did not specifically indicate what the students were expecting to learn [e.g., “The strengths of this course is the pracs as they
are very useful to help students learn” (course 3)] and were not
analyzed further.
Learning Content
Student comments on learning content knowledge related to the
lectures and/or exams or specific concepts (such as osmosis,
action potential propagation, and cardiovascular function) were
analyzed to determine which aspects of the practical curricula
impacted most on content learning (Fig. 4). This revealed a
striking change between the first- and second-year courses in the
Fig. 3. Elements within figure legends. Shown
are an example of a student figure legend from
course 3 (A) and a professional figure legend
from the Journal of Physiology (9) (B), showing all of the five elements identified in the
figure legends: scope, experimental information, data presentation, results, and statistical
information.
Advances in Physiology Education • doi:10.1152/advan.00082.2012 • http://advan.physiology.org
Downloaded from http://advan.physiology.org/ by 10.220.32.246 on June 15, 2017
of each of the five elements: 1) scope, 2) results, 3) data presentation,
4) statistical significance, and 5) experimental details (see an example
from a student report in Fig. 3A). We also applied the same analysis
for figure legends from bar and line graphs in a sample of 10
published articles cited by the students (see example from the Journal
of Physiology in Fig. 3B). A range of journals was included in the
analysis from journals publishing articles of broad significance in
physiology (for example, the Journal of Physiology and European
Journal of Applied Physiology) to journals focused on publishing
articles in specialist areas of physiology (for example, Hypertension
and the American Journal of Cardiology) with impact factors ranging
from 7.45 to 1.63.
The presence or absence of each element in each hypothesis and
figure legend was determined for each of the 5 reports for each of the
21 students. As this represented binary longitudinal data, binary
logistic regressions were performed (SPSS version 21, IBM) to
determine whether there were statistically significant increases in the
inclusion of each element across the successive reports for sample of
21 students. P values of ⬍0.05 were considered statistically significant, and Nagelkerke R2 values are reported.
How We Teach
INQUIRY PRACTICALS DEVELOP SCIENTIFIC THINKING SKILLS
Proportion of comments
on learning content
for each course (%)
Course 3
Autonomy
Scaffolding
Relatedness
Hands-on
50
40
50
Proportion of comments
on learning content
for each course (%)
30
Assessment
0
Assessment
Positive
Negative
Difficulty
20
Curricula aspect
Hands-on
40
50
40
30
10
20
Assessment
Relatedness
30
Hands-on
20
Relatedness
Autonomy
Scaffolding
10
Autonomy
Scaffolding
Difficulty
0
Curricula aspect
Difficulty
C
Course 2
10
B
Course 1
0
Curricula aspect
A
309
Proportion of comments
on learning content
for each course (%)
Fig. 4. How students learn content. Shown are each of the aspects of curricular design that students said helped (positive comments) or hindered (negative
comments) their learning of content as a proportion (%) of all student comments about learning content for each course. A: course 1. B: course 2. C: course 3.
Learning Skills
80
Course 1
Course 2
60
Course 3
40
20
es
s
n
oc
ifi
nt
ie
Sc
C
om
m
c
un
pr
ic
ch
ni
at
io
ca
l
0
Te
Thus, alignment between the practicals, associated assessment,
and lectures is seen by students as one of the most important
aspects of how practicals support their content learning and,
importantly, is related to the degree of autonomy students have
in designing their experiments.
Number of comments
I learnt a lot about our groups [sic] particular topic chosen
for the practical report, but while this is interesting it may not
have a huge amount of relevance for this course. I would rather
that we have a set practical to do that is going to help us more
with our understanding of the course material.
(Course 3)
Learning technical skills. The majority of the comments on
learning technical skills were provided for course 1 (Fig. 5).
The most common skill students mentioned involved learning
to dissect the experimental animal in courses 1 and 2 or to take
clinical measurements in course 3. The majority of the positive
comments indicated that simply gaining experience in performing these techniques made the greatest impact on their learning
(Fig. 6, A–C: hands-on). Positive comments about the impact
of the level of difficulty on earning technical skills (Fig. 6,
A–C: difficulty) indicated that students found the technical
tasks challenging, whereas the negative comments indicated
that students were not being challenged enough (tasks were too
easy). Similarly, positive comments about the relatedness (Fig.
6, A–C: relatedness) indicated that the technical skills were
new to them and that overlaps between practicals helped to
cement their learning of these skills, whereas negative comments indicated that technical skill learning was hindered when
the skills were not new to them or quickly became monotonous. Overall, this would suggest that learning technical skills
is a preliminary part of the learning in practicals that quickly
gives way to more advanced learning once the technical skills
are mastered.
Learning skills in scientific communication. The majority of
comments students made about learning skills in scientific
Learning domains
The comments students made about learning skills described
the following three broad categories of skills: technical skills,
scientific communication skills, and skills in the scientific
process (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5. Types of skills students reported learning during the practical curricula
and associated assessment. The numbers of comments that students made in
the course evaluations after courses 1, 2, and 3 regarding their learning of
technical, communication, and scientific thinking skills during the practical
curricula and associated assessment are shown.
Advances in Physiology Education • doi:10.1152/advan.00082.2012 • http://advan.physiology.org
Downloaded from http://advan.physiology.org/ by 10.220.32.246 on June 15, 2017
features of the curricula that students most frequently reported as
helping their content learning. In course 1, the most frequent
positive and negative comments were focused on how well the
practicals were scheduled to align with the concurrent lecture
concepts (Fig. 4A, relatedness). This was followed by comments
about gaining hands-on experience in practicals (Fig. 4A, handson) that students said allowed them to “apply” their content
knowledge in a practical setting [either explicitly: “Practical allows me to apply what I have learned in lectures and further my
understanding” (course 1) or implicitly “I learn well putting
knowledge into action” (course 1)] or being able “to see” the
concepts in action [either explicitly: “it really helped me see the
effect on a physical level so that I could understand the concept in
more depth and not just as superficial, rope-learnt [sic] information” (course 1) or implicitly “Skeletal muscles [practical was
most helpful to my learning] because the very twitching of the
muscle helped burn the idea of contraction into my mind” (course
1)]. In contrast, for both of the second-year courses, the most
common comments indicated that completing the written report
after each project was pivotal in assisting students with their
content learning (Fig. 4, B and C: assessment). As for course 1, in
courses 2 and 3, students frequently commented on the alignment
between practicals and lectures. However, increasing the project
length in courses 2 and 3 to allow students more time for more
complex self-directed experiments meant that the practicals covered fewer topics and that these topics were dependent on students’ choices in experimental design, as follows:
How We Teach
310
INQUIRY PRACTICALS DEVELOP SCIENTIFIC THINKING SKILLS
Technical Skills
Course 3
Positive
Negative
Difficulty
Autonomy
Scaffolding
Relatedness
Hands-on
Proportion of comments
on learning skills
for each course (%)
50
40
30
0
50
Assessment
20
Curricular aspect
Proportion of comments
on learning skills
for each course (%)
40
0
50
40
30
20
10
Hands-on
Assessment
30
Hands-on
Assessment
Scaffolding
Relatedness
20
Scaffolding
Relatedness
Difficulty
Autonomy
10
Curricular aspect
Difficulty
Autonomy
C
Course 2
10
B
Course 1
0
Curricular aspect
A
Proportion of comments
on learning skills
for each course (%)
Hands-on
Proportion of comments
on learning skills
for each course (%)
50
40
30
20
10
0
50
40
30
20
10
0
0
Assessment
Proportion of comments
on learning skills
for each course (%)
50
Hands-on
Assessment
Scaffolding
Relatedness
40
Scaffolding
Relatedness
Difficulty
Autonomy
30
Hands-on
Assessment
Difficulty
Autonomy
Course 3
20
Scaffolding
Relatedness
Curricular aspect
Difficulty
Autonomy
F
Course 2
10
E
Course 1
Curricular aspect
Curricular aspect
D
Proportion of comments
on learning skills
for each course (%)
Scientific Thinking Skills
Proportion of comments
on learning skills
for each course (%)
Proportion of comments
on learning skills
for each course (%)
Course 3
Difficulty
Autonomy
Scaffolding
Relatedness
Hands-on
50
40
30
20
Assessment
10
Curricular aspect
50
40
Assessment
30
50
40
30
20
10
Assessment
Hands-on
20
Hands-on
Scaffolding
Relatedness
10
Scaffolding
Relatedness
Difficulty
Autonomy
0
Curricular aspect
Difficulty
Autonomy
I
Course 2
0
H
Course 1
0
Curricular aspect
G
Proportion of comments
on learning skills
for each course (%)
Fig. 6. How students learned skills. Shown are each of the aspects of curricular design that students said helped (positive comments) or hindered (negative
comments) their learning of technical laboratory skills (A–C), scientific communication skills (D–F), or scientific thinking skills (G–I) as a proportion (%) of
all student comments about learning skills for each course. A, D, and G: course 1. B, E, and H: course 2. C, F, and I: course 3.
communication came after course 2, as shown in Fig. 5. The
vast majority of the comments students made about learning
communication skills related to skills in scientific writing and
indicated that gaining experience in writing “proper” scientific
reports that were modeled on scientific articles for their assessment helped students develop their skills in scientific communication (Fig. 6, D–F: assessment), for example:
Since I was totally unaware of the intricacies of scientific
report writing, having two opportunities to write one meant I
could waste the first one discovering this fact, and the second
figuring out what...I was doing.
(Course 2)
Students also indicated that having multiple written assessment
tasks (Fig. 6, D–F: assessment) that built on each other (espe-
cially the experimental plan, proposal, and report in course 2)
with feedback from teaching assistants (Fig. 6, D–F: scaffolding) was important for helping students to develop skills in
scientific writing, as follows:
The proposal was a great because we got to hand in a ‘draft’
report and the feedback my tutor gave me really helped me to
improve and write a better report. I think the feedback I got on
both the proposal and the report will help me to write reports
next semester.
(Course 2)
Importantly, students also explicitly indicated that the dual
purpose of using report writing opportunities to learn skills in
scientific communication and content needed to be balanced
appropriately for each assessment task, for example:
Advances in Physiology Education • doi:10.1152/advan.00082.2012 • http://advan.physiology.org
Downloaded from http://advan.physiology.org/ by 10.220.32.246 on June 15, 2017
Communication Skills
How We Teach
INQUIRY PRACTICALS DEVELOP SCIENTIFIC THINKING SKILLS
A hypotonic solution will result in a greater amount of
colour in the blood plasma, in comparison to a hypertonic
solution.
There was a statistically significant increase in the number of
students in our sample who included measureable dependent
Hypotheses
*
Designing our own experiments were good though, and the
statistics was even more involved than in my statistics course!
(Course 3)
However, in course 3, students also indicated that there was too
much autonomy for the more complex aspects of the data
analysis and interpreting results (Fig. 6I: autonomy). Therefore, in many cases, students also specifically requested additional guidance:
*
Report 1
Report 2
Report 3
Report 4
Report 5
100
80
60
40
20
nd
e
pe
de
e
xt
te
on
C
ar
ia
bl
e
In
de
pe
nd
en
tv
ar
ia
C
bl
om
e
pa
ra
to
rs
ta
te
m
en
ts
nt
v
tv
ar
ia
bl
e
0
M
The impact of having to design their own experiments was
also found to cause students to undertake more complex data
analysis and interpret more complex results than they
had experienced in other more structured courses, for
example:
During their experiments, students were not able to directly
measure cells exploding or shrinking (although this represents
a fair conceptual understanding); instead, they were able to
measure the absorbance of the solution (indicated by the color
of the solution) using a spectrophotometer. Therefore, an
example of a student hypothesis with a measureable outcome
in this context was the following:
bl
The presentation and talk really helped my learning as I
found it good to understand the step by step process necessary
for preparing an experiment.
(Course 3)
We hypothesise that cells in a hypotonic solution will
explode while cells in a hypertonic solution will shrink down.
su
ra
The practical were the most helpful for me. I learnt so much
from having to write a detailed scientific paper on my findings
and my research design.
(Course 2)
Analysis of hypotheses. In the hypotheses, dependent variables
were always present (Fig. 7); however, some of the dependent
variables in the reports from course 1 were not measureable by the
methods available to the students, for example:
ea
In addition, having to write about the basis for the design of
their own experiment, and the analysis and interpretation of
their own results in their assessment was influential in helping
students to learn these skills in scientific process (Fig. 6, G–I:
assessment), for example:
Student Scientific Reports
Proportion of reports (%)
[Strengths of the course were] designing our own prac to
understand the process of how this is done.
(Course 3)
Good setup making students design their project, however I
would’ve liked more time to discuss the physiology of the
chosen groups design.
(Course 3)
de
n
...the practicals helped to teach proper experimental design
at a level not done before in another course.
(Course 2)
Vote for final experiment differently and have a chance to
put forward ideas for changes.
(Course 3)
ep
en
The osmosis prac class is the one I found most useful. It was
during this prac that we first had to develop a hypothesis and
method of our own to test it.
(Course 1)
Students also requested more guidance from the instructors or
more structure to the discussions to improve the experimental
design, for example:
Elements within hypothesis
Fig. 7. Elements that students included in the hypotheses in their reports.
Shown are proportions of hypotheses in the student reports analyzed (reports
1–5) that incorporated each of the elements of scientific information: dependent variable, dependent variable as a measurable outcome, independent
variable, comparator statement for independent variable, and context. *Binary
logistic regressions showed that the proportion of hypotheses that contained
measureable dependent variables (P ⬍ 0.05, R2 ⫽ 0.482) and comparator
statements for the independent variables (P ⬍ 0.05, R2 ⫽ 0.325) significantly
increased across the five reports.
Advances in Physiology Education • doi:10.1152/advan.00082.2012 • http://advan.physiology.org
Downloaded from http://advan.physiology.org/ by 10.220.32.246 on June 15, 2017
Although the oral presentation task in course 3 was designed to
help students develop skills in scientific presentations, particularly in developing persuasive verbal arguments based on
scientific literature, there were few comments from course 3
about learning skills in oral presentation. Most comments
suggested that the marking standards may have been too easy
(Fig. 6F: difficulty) and thus did not challenge some students to
develop their skills beyond their current capabilities [e.g., “the
presentation was easy marks but pointless” (course 3)].
Learning scientific thinking skills. The majority of comments students made about learning skills associated with the
scientific process attributed specific learning gains in hypothesis construction, experimental design, interpreting results, and
data analysis to having autonomy in developing their own
experiment (Fig. 6, G–I: autonomy), for example:
There was no assistance with Prism [statistical and graphing
software] except from tutors. But practical classes had finished
when we were completing the assignment so we could no
longer discuss in person the assignment with tutors.
(Course 3)
D
It was very useful though having such an easy prac first up
because it allowed us to learn how to write up these pracs
properly and given that the topic was easy, it allowed us to
focus more on our style of writing than on having to fully
understand the concepts as well (if we didn’t already).
(Course 1)
311
How We Teach
INQUIRY PRACTICALS DEVELOP SCIENTIFIC THINKING SKILLS
*
*
Report 2
Report 3
Report 4
Report 5
Professional
60
40
20
n
at
io
n
m
at
io
en
ta
li
nf
or
m
nf
or
Ex
pe
rim
St
at
is
tic
al
i
pr
at
a
D
ts
de
sc
r
ip
tio
es
en
ta
tio
n
n
0
es
ul
The addition of adrenaline to a propranolol treated toad heart
will not produce any observable changes in heart rate, compared to a baseline reading
*
80
of
fig
ur
e
compared with hypotheses that explicitly included comparisons with control or baseline conditions:
*
100
R
Anticipation of exercise will cause an increase in Heart Rate
and Blood Glucose levels
Figure legends
Sc
op
e
variables in their hypotheses across the five reports (P ⬍ 0.05,
R2 ⫽ 0.482; Fig. 7). Students always included independent
variables that were appropriate to the methods available (Fig.
7) but did not always include explicit comparisons for the
independent variables, generally omitting the comparisons
with a baseline control, as illustrated by the following example:
Proportion of reports
and articles (%)
312
Elements within figure legends
Anticipation of exercise would result in increased blood
glucose in the period prior to exercise compared to individuals
not anticipating exercise.
There was a statistically significant increase in the number of
students in our sample who included comparator statements for
the independent variables in their hypotheses across the five
reports (P ⬍ 0.05, R2 ⫽ 0.325; Fig. 7).
In contrast, although the hypotheses usually included contextual information about the experiment (i.e., the animal
and/or tissue on which the experiment was being performed),
the presence of this information did not change significantly
across the five reports (P ⬎ 0.05; Fig. 7).
Analysis of figure legends. Across all four assignments for
which students wrote figure legends (reports 2–5), there was
almost always a statement that summarized the scope of the
figure. In many cases, these scoping statements matched the independent and dependent variables and context used in the hypothesis for that report, for example:
The effect of a local anaesthetic on the compound action
potential amplitude in the sciatic nerve of a Bufo marinus over
time.
There was a statistically significant increase in the number of
students in our sample who included result descriptions (P ⬍
0.05, R2 ⫽ 0.147; Fig. 8), data presentation (P ⬍ 0.05, R2 ⫽
0.239; Fig. 8), statistical information (P ⬍ 0.05, R2 ⫽ 0.453;
Fig. 8), and experimental information (P ⬍ 0.05, R2 ⫽ 0.171;
Fig. 8) in the figure legends across reports 2–5 but no change
in the use of scope statements (P ⬍ 0.05; Fig. 8).
Overall, the information that students included in their figure
legends across the three courses is consistent with the information found in figure legends in published literature. There
was a large degree of variation in the types of information
included among the small sample of figure legends from
published articles (Fig. 8). However, it is important to note
that, first, students did not include types of information not
found in published figure legends and, second, published figure
legends did not include any additional types of information not
found in the majority of students’ figure legends in courses 2
and 3.
DISCUSSION
The series of vertically integrated inquiry-based practical
curricula described in this report was designed to help students
develop the critical thinking skills needed to solve the complex
problems they will face after graduation. Specifically, these
Fig. 8. Elements included in the figure legends of student reports and published physiology journal articles. Shown are proportions of figure legends in
the student reports (reports 2–5) and published journal articles (Professional)
analyzed that incorporated each element of scientific information: scope of
figure, results description, data presentation, statistical information, and experimental information. *Binary logistic regressions showed that the proportion of
figure legends that contained results descriptions (P ⬍ 0.05, R2 ⫽ 0.147), data
presentation (P ⬍ 0.05, R2 ⫽ 0.239), statistical significance (P ⬍ 0.05, R2 ⫽
0.453), and experimental information (P ⬍ 0.05, R2 ⫽ 0.171) significantly
increased across the student reports.
curricula aimed to facilitate student development of increasingly advanced skills in the scientific method and scientific
communication by working with increasing ownership of their
research questions and autonomy over their research projects.
This study found that students reported substantial gains in
their learning of content and skills in laboratory techniques,
scientific communication, and scientific thinking. Learning
gains in scientific communication and thinking were evident in
the hypotheses and figure legends written by students in their
five scientific reports as they progressed through the three
courses. Key features of the curricular design and areas for
improving the design to further support student learning were
identified from student evaluations and the nature of the
changes in student hypotheses and figure legends.
Providing students with multiple opportunities to gain experience and feedback in developing their own hypotheses and
experimental designs clearly helped students become familiar
with the process and conventions for scientific investigation
and to become acutely aware of the central role that hypotheses
and experimental design play in biomedical science. This is
particularly important given recent evidence showing that conceptions of hypotheses represent a threshold concept in biology
(21), that is, students find the rules for effective hypothesis
construction as well as the roles that hypotheses play in science
particularly troublesome concepts to understand, but once they
do begin to understand these important scientific principles,
their thinking is irreversibly transformed. Developing student
understanding of hypotheses has been found to be the most
commonly cited learning goal for inquiry-based practicals in
undergraduate biomedical science (8). This is certainly appropriate considering the central role that hypotheticodeductive
reasoning has been show to play in scientific thinking (7) and
in sound reasoning more generally (15). Indeed, we (25) have
recently found that students entering course 1 carry a range of
conceptions around hypotheses. These conceptions range from
a simplistic view that hypotheses are based on facts to more
advanced and accurate conceptions that hypotheses are predic-
Advances in Physiology Education • doi:10.1152/advan.00082.2012 • http://advan.physiology.org
Downloaded from http://advan.physiology.org/ by 10.220.32.246 on June 15, 2017
or
How We Teach
INQUIRY PRACTICALS DEVELOP SCIENTIFIC THINKING SKILLS
present study, students’ figure legends increased in complexity
in courses 2 and 3, incorporating more of the types of information found in the professional figure legends published in
physiology journals.
Findings from student evaluations also demonstrated that
students required more explicit instruction than they were
provided to develop their skills in statistical analysis, particularly as the analyses became more complex in the large clinical
studies in the most senior course. In subsequent iterations of
these curricula, we developed courses 2 and 3 to improve the
vertical integration of skills around statistical analyses. In
course 2, where the experiments are relatively less complex,
we provided students with more freedom in developing hypotheses that involve more complex relationships and then
scaffolded students in gaining experience in dealing with the
complex statistical analyses required to test these hypotheses.
In course 3, we then embedded more explicit instruction on the
links between experimental design and statistical analysis early
in the semester, and we included an additional final practical
class that focuses on statistical analyses and interpretation of
experimental findings. Not only does this increase student
preparedness for the complexity of the analysis undertaken in
course 3, but teaching assistants are now also present when
students are completing the statistical analysis and are thus able
to guide students in making sound decisions about the analysis
they undertake and in interpreting the findings. Together, these
changes have increased the degree of vertical integration across
courses, enabling students to tackle complex analytical techniques successfully and make appropriate interpretations about
the results.
Writing reports in the genre of scientific articles was cited as
a crucial aspect in helping students to develop their skills in
scientific communication. Across both the positive and negative comments, students indicated that learning to write in the
scientific genre was an important, advanced skill that required
practice and guidance through regular feedback. The aspects of
the practical curricula design that students identified as providing the greatest support developing their skills in scientific
communication were the authenticity of the assessment design,
along with the scaffolding and guides, and the repetitive
opportunities for students to develop their written communication skills through experience and feedback from teaching
assistants, within each course and across the vertically integrated courses. These aspects all combined into a powerful
system for facilitating student learning of effective written
scientific communication.
In contrast, students very rarely reported learning gains in
oral scientific communication skills, highlighting important
flaws in the design of the oral assessment. Specifically, students in course 3 were dissatisfied with the way that the
projects and experimental designs were decided during the
whole class discussion. In addition, some comments also suggested that high levels of expectations used for the reports need
to be applied to the oral presentations to help students develop
these communication skills adequately. Thus, an increase in
expectations was required to promote greater learning gains,
but it was also clear that we could not expect students to
directly transfer the experience and skills they had gained in
the small group discussion around hypotheses and experimental designs in courses 1 and 2 to the large group oral critiques
in course 3. In subsequent iterations of course 3, we provided
Advances in Physiology Education • doi:10.1152/advan.00082.2012 • http://advan.physiology.org
Downloaded from http://advan.physiology.org/ by 10.220.32.246 on June 15, 2017
tions and multivariate causal relationships that need to be
tested using evidence from controlled experiments. The curricula we have described in this report serve as key examples of
how the basic premises underlying hypothesis construction can
be embedded in the first year of an undergraduate degree and
then built on with increasing complexity through links to
experimental design, statistical analysis, and interpretation of
results in subsequent courses. In this study, we have shown that
students often begin course 1 by writing hypotheses with
dependent variables that stem from a conceptual understanding
of the physiological mechanisms underlying their experiment
rather than the measureable dependent variables that are then
linked to the development of suitable experimental methods. In
addition, although students recognized the need for independent variables in their hypotheses and chose relevant independent variables, they often missed part of the comparison
statement for the independent variable. This is particularly
interesting given that one of the key differentiators found
between undergraduate students who are nonscience majors,
undergraduate students undertaking a biology major, and biological scientists is the extent to which the group identified
baseline controls as a necessary control for testing hypotheses
(1). Therefore, incorporating baselines or nontreatment controls as part of the independent variable condition represents an
important learning goal in developing hypothetic-deductive
reasoning in biological science and needs particular attention in
curricular design, implementation, and assessment.
Another aspect of hypotheses that students seemed to struggle with was the context of the experimental paradigm. The
physiological context is important for determining the limitations to the conclusions that can be drawn from the study and
is thus very important for the more advanced levels of scientific
reasoning necessary when students discuss the findings of their
experiments in relation to scientific literature. For example,
there is a large difference between the physiological mechanisms in play for a group of young healthy humans compared
with older humans or elite athletes. We have used this specific
finding to improve subsequent iterations of this curricula, that
is, we have included the specific wording of “experimental
context” in the marking criteria for hypotheses in the reports in
later iterations of courses 2 and 3 to help students realize the
necessity of this information. In the future, we plan to investigate the impact of this strategy on students’ use of context in
their hypotheses and in the critical integration of their findings
with primary research literature in the discussion sections of
their reports.
There was a large degree of variation in the types of information included in the sample of 10 professional figure
legends, which raises the question of what information is
essential for a figure legend in science. Apart from the wellknown “rule of thumb” that figure legends should contain all of
the information necessary to understand the figure without
reference to the text of the article, there is little in the scientific
literature or educational literature on the essential features of
figure legends. All 10 figure legends from physiology journals
we analyzed did include a scope statement and, for figures with
quantitative data, a description of how these data are presented.
On the other hand, the additions of experimental and statistical
information as well as the results shown in the figure appear to
be more context dependent. Regardless of this variability in the
scientific literature, using the learning scaffold described in the
313
How We Teach
314
INQUIRY PRACTICALS DEVELOP SCIENTIFIC THINKING SKILLS
Creating a vertically integrated series of courses in which the
early practical classes are extensively guided and scaffolded
and then progressively reducing that scaffolding as students
progress encourages students to work with increasing ownership of their research questions and autonomy over their
research projects. However, the findings of this study also
highlight that to appropriately support students when novel
types of skills or a large increment in the advancement of the
skills is required, there is a need to reintroduce key aspects of
the scaffolding temporarily. We know that students struggle
when required to take on a level of autonomy and ownership
they had not previously encountered (14, 20) but that this
autonomy is necessary for graduates to succeed in the workforce. Therefore, the curricula described here serve as important examples of how to provide early stage undergraduate
students with appropriately adjusted experiences and levels of
autonomy that improve their scientific communication and
scientific thinking skills and thus prepare them to confidently
and effectively confront the complex, novel problems they will
encounter in the 21st century workplace.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank all of the students who provided the detailed evaluations
of these courses that enabled us to determine the specific aspects of the
curricula that had the greatest impact on student learning. The authors are also
grateful to the Faculty of Science, The University of Queensland, for supporting the development of the evaluation tools and for providing writing retreats
and workshops to complete the analysis and writing of this report.
GRANTS
A University of Queensland Teaching and Learning Strategic Grant supported the characterization of the inquiry-based practical curricula.
DISCLOSURES
No conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, are declared by the author(s).
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Author contributions: K.Z., K.C., J.P.G., and L.J.L. conception and design of
research; K.Z., K.C., J.P.G., and L.J.L. performed experiments; K.Z. analyzed
data; K.Z., A.B., and K.C. interpreted results of experiments; K.Z. and A.B.
prepared figures; K.Z., K.C., and J.P.G. drafted manuscript; K.Z., A.B., and K.C.
edited and revised manuscript; K.Z., A.B., and K.C. approved final version of
manuscript.
REFERENCES
1. Baker LM, Dunbar K. Experimental design heuristics for scientific
discovery: the use of baseline and known controls. Int J Hum Comput
Studies 53: 335–349, 2000.
2. Boud DJ, Dunn J, Kennedy T, Thorley R. The aims of science
laboratory courses: a survey of students, graduates and practising scientists. Int J Sci Educ 2: 415– 428, 1980.
3. Boyer Commission. The Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University: Reinventing Undergraduate Education: a
Blueprint for America’s Research Universities (online). www.niu.edu/
engagedlearning/research/pdfs/Boyer_Report.pdf [1 October 2013].
4. Brickman P, Gormally C, Armstrong N, Hallar B. Effects of inquirybased learning on students’ science literacy skills and confidence. Int J
Scholar Teach Learn 3: 1–22, 2009.
5. Bugarcic A, Zimbardi K, Macaranas J, Thorn P. An inquiry-based
practical for a large, foundation-level undergraduate laboratory that enhances student understanding of basic cellular concepts and scientific
experimental design. Biochem Mol Biol Educ 40: 174 –180, 2012.
6. Casotti G, Rieser-Danner L, Knabb MT. Successful implementation of
inquiry-based physiology laboratories in undergraduate major and nonmajor courses. Adv Physiol Educ 32: 286 –296, 2008.
Advances in Physiology Education • doi:10.1152/advan.00082.2012 • http://advan.physiology.org
Downloaded from http://advan.physiology.org/ by 10.220.32.246 on June 15, 2017
further explicit structure to the decision-making process that
leads from the oral presentations to the experimental design.
This scaffolding uses a series of questions such as “Can you
obtain meaningful control data (this is very important!), and
what would you expect that to be?” and “Have you standardized the treatments such as dosage or exercise level?.” These
questions are posed by teaching assistants to structure the
discussion that follows the selection of the favored experiment,
providing a checklist to ensure the integrity of the experimental
design without limiting the variety or extent of the designs.
This process thus prompts students to consider, negotiate, and
refine key aspects of their class experimental design, ensuring
students retain ownership and autonomy in the project decisions while also teaching students the process that scientists
use to critique and improve scientific investigations.
The majority of comments indicated that students believe a
key role of the practical curricula is to reinforce and extend
their understanding of the disciplinary content knowledge, a
prioritization that has been demonstrated previously from undergraduate students in biology, chemistry, and physics (2, 19).
However, the breadth of content that students include in their
reports and, therefore, were able to reinforce is dependent on
the experimental designs. Thus, some students indicated that
they regretted the narrow scope of their experimental design
when it came to writing the report. Our students suggested
several improvements for the curricula design to increase the
breadth of their content learning from the practical curricula
and associated assessment. These included additional written
assessment tasks to cover more of the lecture material, a larger
number of shorter projects, or that the instructors provide
greater direction to broaden the scope of the experimental
design. In subsequent iterations of courses 2 and 3, we focused
more of the feedback and advice provided by instructors and
teaching assistants during the experimental design phase on
helping students to approach their project designs strategically,
developing hypotheses and experiments that encompasses the
breadth of physiology relevant to as much of the course as
possible. This strategy was chosen to help students to extend
the analysis and integration of physiological systems, thus
making the current assessment tasks more effective in helping
students in their learning goals without adding additional
assessment items or reducing the capacity for complex and
extensive projects. This is particularly important given that our
data and previous studies across a range of biosciences internationally (13) indicate that students expect their content learning during practical classes to go beyond the level of their
lecture material in their practical classes. Taken together, these
findings have important implications for the development of
inquiry-based practical curricula and their associated student
guidelines, teaching assistant training, and assessment requirements, that is, a combination of autonomy and strategic guidance is needed to support students in effectively using the
practical classes and assessment tasks to enhance both the
depth and breadth of their content learning.
In summary, our study clearly shows vertical integration of
inquiry-based practical curriculum has a large impact on student learning across broad range of domains. Apart from the
expected learning gains in advanced scientific thinking skills
and the conventions for scientific communication, students also
reported learning a large amount of discipline-specific content
that aligned with, and extended on, their lecture material.
How We Teach
INQUIRY PRACTICALS DEVELOP SCIENTIFIC THINKING SKILLS
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
ing: a four-year study of “Teams and Streams”. Adv Physiol Educ 28:
199 –209, 2004.
Michael J. Where’s the evidence that active learning works? Adv Physiol
Educ 30: 159 –167, 2006.
National Research Council. BIO2010:Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists. Washington, DC: National Academies, 2003.
Russell CB, Weaver GC. Students perceptions of the purpose and
function of the laboratory in science: a grounded theory study. Int J
Scholar Teach Learn 2: 1–14, 2008.
Silverthorn DU. Teaching and learning in the interactive classroom. Adv
Physiol Educ 30: 135–140, 2006.
Taylor CE, Meyer JHF. The testable hypothesis as a threshold concept for biology students. In: Threshold Concepts and Transformational Learning, edited by Meyer JH, Land R, Baillie C. Rotterdam:
Sense, 2010.
The University of Queensland. Bachelor of Science Review. Brisbane:
The Univ. of Queensland, 2008, p. 339.
Willison JW. Multiple contexts, multiple outcomes, once conceptual
framework for research skill development in the undergraduate curriculum. Council Undergrad Res Quat 29: 10 –14, 2009.
Willison JW, O’Regan K. Commonly known, commonly not known,
totally unknown: a framework for students becoming researchers. Higher
Educ Res Dev 26: 393– 410, 2007.
Zimbardi K, Meyer JHF, Chunduri P, Taylor CE, Ross PM, Tzioumis
V, Lluka LJ. Student understanding of the critical features of an hypothesis: variation across epistemic and heuristic dimensions. In: 4th Biennial
Threshold Concepts Conference and 6th NAIRTL Annual Conference:
Threshold Concepts ‘From Personal Practice to Communities of Practice’. Dublin: Trinity College, 2012.
Advances in Physiology Education • doi:10.1152/advan.00082.2012 • http://advan.physiology.org
Downloaded from http://advan.physiology.org/ by 10.220.32.246 on June 15, 2017
7. Dunbar K, Fugelsang J. Scientific thinking and reasoning. In: The
Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning, edited by Holyoak KJ,
Morrison RG. New York, NY: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005, p. 705–725.
8. Elliott K, Boin A, Irving H, Johnson E, Galea V. Teaching Scientific
Inquiry skills: a Handbook for Bioscience Educators in Australian Universities. Sydney: Australian Learning and Teaching Council, 2010.
9. Green AL, Wang S, Purvis S, Owen SL, Bain PG, Stein JF, Guz A, Aziz
TZ, Paterson DJ. Identifying cardiorespiratory neurocircuitry involved in
central command during exercise in humans. J Physiol 578: 605– 612, 2007.
10. Hanauer DI, Jacobs-Sera D, Pedulla ML, Cresawn SG, Hendrix RW,
Hatfull GF. Teaching scientific inquiry. Science 314: 1880 –1881, 2006.
11. Handelsman J, Ebert-May D, Beichner R, Bruns P, Chang A, DeHaan
R, Gentile J, Lauffer S, Stewart J, Tilghman SM, Wood WB. Scientific
teaching. Science 304: 512–522, 2004.
12. Hatch A. Doing Qualitative Research in Education Settings. Albany:
State Univ. of New York Press, 2002.
13. Hughes I, Anderson-Beck R, Atkinson J, Awabdy D, Bowmer C,
Colson N, Cousins X, Farrand-Zimbardi K, Good J, Goodhead L,
Kahler C, Lluka L, Moni R, Nagley P, Naug H, Overfield J, Pountney
D, Sheehan J, Wood D. Improving first-year laboratory classes in bioscience–students’ views. In: Report for the UK Higher Education Academy. Leeds, UK: UK Higher Education Academy, 2010, p. 37.
14. Kirschner PA, Sweller J, Clark RE. Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: an analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery,
problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching. Educ Psychol 41:
75– 86, 2006.
15. Kuhn D, Pease M. What needs to develop in the development of inquiry
skills? Cogn Instruct 26: 512–559, 2008.
16. Luckie DB, Maleszewski JJ, Loznak SD, Krha M. Infusion of collaborative inquiry throughout a biology curriculum increases student learn-
315