CI-1	Title	Initials	Project	Requested	Recommended Funding ($K)
Hume	Prof	ID	Protein requirements for bandicoots and bilbies	$36,944	$28
Shine	Prof	R	Mating systems in snakes	$49,722	$34
Thompson	A/Prof	MB	Energetics of singing in cicadas	$41,367	$25
Rouse & Jermiin	Dr & Dr	GW & L	Morphology and diversity of Australian featherstars and sea lilies (Crinoidea)	$35,702	$30
Total				$163,735	$117

 

Celebrating a decade of success in biology

Mary Peat
Charlotte Taylor

For the past 12 years a group of staff has been united by a teaching commitment to FYB. This collaboration has involved a pooling of individual ideas, expertise, interests and philosophies to further the common aim of providing students with an excellent learning experience. This will foster an ongoing interest in the sciences and an understanding of the main issues that face us as we move into the 21st century. The team is responsible for the implementation of seven units of study taken by up to 1600 students.

The overall teaching philosophy in first year biology is to provide students with an enjoyable and intellectually stimulating first year experience. The philosophy is communicated to the students in an "orientation" section at the beginning of their notes. This was originally written to help unpack the curriculum (in line with one of the recommendations of McInnis et al., 1995), so that students have a clear understanding of our expectations of them. This is complemented by setting up peer groups within the large lab classes, thus offering opportunities for students to develop learning communities that provide a safe, student-centred learning environment. These initiatives have encouraged students to be more independent and to use one another as a resource, while our teaching strategy has moved to having a guiding or learning facilitation role. Over the years we have developed activities to support this mode. The key features of the first year experience in the context of our philosophy and in line with our Faculty's Teaching and Learning Plan, are to:
•Provide students with an enjoyable introduction to the scientific discipline of biology. This includes a Bridging Course (introduced in 1999), an introductory lab class to get to know one another and the learning environment, within the context of biology, and detailed documentation with clearly defined learning goals and objectives.
• Create a student-centred learning environment in the laboratory sessions by setting up peer groups for experiments and other group activities, integrating games and group discussion activities to stimulate active learning within peer groups and creating sequential learning experiences building on student understanding and use of the biological materials.
• Offer learning resources to students in several ways to increase the flexibility of access for all students by providing a Virtual Learning Environment on the Web (http://fybio.bio.usyd.edu.au/vle/L1/) with access to learning resources and student-student and student-staff communication, whilst maintaining a Resource Centre equipped with paper-based and computer based learning resources, microscopes, posters etc. as back-up.
• Offer students synchronous and asynchronous meetings/communication with staff (academic, administrative and technical) to give help and support on any aspect of the unit of study with face-to-face consultation available every week and access to CyberStaff (-Tutor, -Admin and -Tech) via the VLE. Web-based discussions among staff and students (using WebTeach) on specific topics such as report writing skills, examination techniques and lecture related topics are integrated into the program.
• Enable students to help themselves, so that they take the responsibility for their own learning and develop life-long learning skills, by providing web-based tutorial modules which also provide revision/quiz questions, self-assessment modules (SAMs) comprising a variety of question styles and extensive feedback, material for lecture preparation, and a mid semester practice exam.
•Enable students to begin to develop generic skills within a context of 'real world' biology by working in teams in the laboratory context, presenting talks to small groups, researching and producing poster presentations in small groups, reading and critically discussing scientific materials, and being required to word process written assessment tasks.

Within the first year biology context two issues have been seen to be pivotal for improving the first year experiences
  - the development of social and study networks to facilitate the transition and
  - the giving of timely feedback and self-assessment opportunities
These two issues were also highlighted in the Australian benchmark survey of the first year experience (McInnis, et al., 1995).

Social and study networks
From 1996 a Transition Workshop (and Parents' Program) has been organised to help prepare students in the Faculty of Science for their first year at university. Many of the first year biology students attend this. The workshop targets one of the major recommendations of McInnis, James and McNaught (1995) - that of creating an institutional identity for the students so that they feel more comfortable in their new learning environment. The program sets up a mechanism for students to develop peer groups, both social and academic, before the semester begins. The outcomes of this program show that students who attend the workshop, in comparison with those who do not attend, are:
  - less likely to have thought about deferring or dropping out, having high levels of self esteem
  - more likely to have collaborated in learning activities
  - more likely to have been involved in social meetings
  - more academically motivated, having a clearer sense of purpose and identity
  - more appreciative of courses and teachers
  - adopting a deeper approach to learning

In addition, those students who attend the workshop are likely to have a higher WAM at the end of the first semester and the end of their first year. These outcomes have been disseminated nationally and internationally (see Peat, Dalziel and Grant, 2000).

First year biology makes a very conscious effort to help students develop social and study networks from the beginning of the first semester. Students who attended the Faculty workshop are kept together within the lab classes to have continuity between the workshop and the biology lab experience. In the lab students work as a peer group, experiencing team work and developing better communication skills. Students also work together to produce posters and presentations - this requires organising the 'team', researching the topic, preparing the poster and giving a talk. These sessions help students to develop confidence in talking within the discipline. They are further encouraged to work together outside of formal teaching hours.

Feedback - the giving of timely feedback and self-assessment opportunities. All formative/summative continuous assessment tasks have been developed to incorporate feedback from teaching staff and many also include a peer or self-assessment component. As communication is an essential skill in our modern society, emphasis has been placed on developing both written and oral expertise in all students. This focuses on the use of posters and talks which are assessed formatively and summatively with feedback from peers and staff. The presentation sessions are very popular with students both as an independent group exercise and as a learning tool for biological concepts.

Individual writing skills are fostered through the integration of the "Writing in Biology" program to help students develop skills in writing lab reports and essays. Students write a "practice" report on a small experiment, which is peer assessed against criteria developed by the students. For the first summatively assessed report students have an opportunity to submit a "draft" copy which is staff assessed against a feedback sheet. On re-submission of the "final" copy extensive feedback comments are given by the staff marker. Discussion sessions with students are used to model the use of this feedback when preparing subsequent reports.

A number of projects have been developed to give students feedback under exam-like conditions. Weekly quizzes (delivered via WebMCQ) give each student instant formative and summative feedback on progress, whilst self marking of a "practice" exam allows the students to self assess their knowledge base. The answers have feedback incorporated in them, and students with problems are directed to self-help remedial tutorials. In addition, the design of our CAL modules includes a quiz section for self-assessment and this incorporates feedback explaining why the response was correct or incorrect. In particular the SAMs were developed to enable students to self assess their understanding of larger topic areas within the various units of study, and to gain an understanding of how new learning is integrated with prior knowledge.

Science teaching needs to suit the students' needs and understanding, and employers' expectations. The strategies currently used in first year biology to manage student learning and improve the learning experience include a mix of on-campus and on-line opportunities. This strategy has the potential to help students who may otherwise give up when the pressure of time and other commitments (such as paid employment) increases. It is also acknowledged that students have different study skills and therefore we need to use a variety of techniques to assist their learning, all of which must be embedded in the teaching and learning environment.

McInnis, C., James, R & McNaught, C. (1995) The First year on campus: Diversity in the initial experiences of Australian undergraduates. Melbourne, Australia: Centre for the Study on Higher Education.

Peat, M., Dalziel, J. & Grant, A. M. (2000) Enhancing the transition to university by facilitating social and study networks: Results of a one-day workshop Innovations in Education and Training International 37 (4) 293-303

 

SOBscript

The more astute of our members will realise that it is now the third week of March and we are only just settling down to read the first enthralling installment of SOBscript for the year. My profoundist apologies for the delay, I can only plead chronic overcommitment. What has been happening, you ask? Just about everything. We have had births, departures, arrivals, prizes, retirements and completions. I will try and keep it short and sweet - the prose may be less than what you have come to expect!

Births

Virginia Creighton (nee Klomp) had a bouncing baby boy at 3.20 am on 1/12/00. Vital Statistics; Zackery Alan Creighton, 3.6kg
50cm long. Both are well.

Departures

Julian Hughes and Heather Patterson have left as a prelude to the imminent demise of the Fush Lab in April. Gissele Walker has left for Copenhagen and London to indulge her passions for protistology and baroque violin - half her luck! Sohan Shetty has given up his career as a hammock engineer and stand up comic and left for a brief respite at home in India. While not yet gone, Bob Reed will soon be leaving for Texas. His absence will be met with a sigh of relief from the Dickman lab who look forward to a marked improvement in the taste of their coffee.

Arrivals

Some have arrived, others have just changed hats. Lars Jermiin is no longer a much valued guest from ANGIC, he is now Lecturer in Cell Biology, while Ron Skurray is bemoaning the lost of his trusted second, Neville Firth has evolved into the Lecturer for Bio-informatics. In the new faces section Frank Seebacher has returned ( he is an ex student). Frank has kindly sent me this bio - we may also look forward to rogue crocodiles in the building again.

Frank Seebacher joined the School of Biological Sciences as an Associate Lecturer. He did his undergraduate degree here at Sydney University, and completed his PhD at the University of Queensland. Since then, he has held post-doctoral positions at James Cook University in Townsville and at The University of Queensland. His main research interests are the thermal and cardiovascular physiology of reptiles, and biophysical theory. At the moment, he is involved in several research projects on:
- cardiac control during thermoregulation in lizards (with Craig Franklin from UQ) - metabolic enzyme activity of crocodiles (with Mark Read from QldNPWS) and alligators (with Ruth Elsey from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and Helga Guderley from Laval University in Quebec) - crocodile thermal relations (with Gordon Grigg from UQ) - crocodile diving physiology (with C. Franklin and G. Grigg) - dinosaur thermal physiology and morphology - evolution of endothermy.

Frank's contact details and office are still somewhat undecided, but he has
a lab (331 in A08) and an e-mail address (fseebach@bio.usyd.edu.au)

Retirments

Alfie Meats retired on the 28th of February and promptly gave us a terrible fright! We wish Alfie all the best and a speedy recovery - he was sighted by a reliable source sneaking into the building late last week - and look forward to more of his priceless input.

Prizes

Ricky Spencer won the prize for the best student paper at the Australian Society of Herpetologists in Tasmania in February.

Miscellania

Mike Thompson supplied this precis of events for the last couple of months- “I have just spent 2 1/2 weeks at 2 meetings in New Zealand. The first was the Society for Research on Amphibians and Reptiles in New Zealand, where I presented 2 papers on behalf of myself, Chris Murphy (Anatomy and Histology) and Margot Hosie (EM Unit). Some of our ex-students were there: Sarah Smith (did honours with Rick Shine, now doing Ph.D. in Adelaide) and Paul Doughty (Ph.D. with Rick Shine, now postdoc at ANU). The meeting was on Lake Rotoiti in Nelson Lakes National Park. The weather was glorious and I even took a plunge into the lake (takes your breath away - snow melt). The second meeting was an international conference, the Ecology of Insular Biotas at Victoria University of Wellington, where I was invited to give the after dinner speech - a nerve wracking prospect. I found the after dinner speech to be infinitely more difficult than a scientific presentation, but it went down famously on the night. Others of our ex-students were at the meeting, including Carl and Fiona Qualls (nee Downey) who are now postdocing in Guam, and Dave Slip who is now the Wildlife Officer on Christmas Island.

All in all, it was another rotten trip to New Zealand. While I was away, Melinda kept the wheels of research ticking over nicely in the lab.

Greg Rouse recently held a successful exhibition of his astounding mixed media art work at the Lewis Morely Gallery in Stanmore. The exhibition entitled minutiae comprised photographs, electron micro graphs and hand coloured images of life under the microscope.