Course Content
I have worked as a TA for the existing Life in the Universe class for 4 quarters now. Although it is taught differently depending on the professor, the course generally covers material from biology and chemistry (the definition of life, cellular processes), moves on to solar system and planetary science (the birth of the solar system and properties of planets), touches on exoplanets (remote sensing techniques and Kepler results), and ends with the Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation. These topics are covered nearly every time the course is taught. Some professors chose to delve more deeply into the biology side of the course, while others go so far as to bring up cosmology and the Big Bang.
Teaching Strategies
The course is usually quite large (~130 students, split up into 3 groups for discussion sections), and taught lecture-style (using power-point slides) in a classroom with stadium seating. While the class is lecture-based, TAs are encouraged to use alternative (more interactive) teaching styles during discussion section. I usually try to mix interactive lectures (interjecting multiple choice questions, engaging in back-and-forth discussions) with group work and reflective individual free-writing. Last quarter, we used online discussion boards as part of their participation grade. For 2 of the 4 quarters I've TA'd this course, the discussion sections have been mandatory. That is not common practice for Physics and Astronomy courses at UCLA; usually the discussion sections are optional.
Student Response
The student evaluations are usually positive at the end of the year. Almost all students pass the class, and many do exceptionally well. Despite these seemingly positive results, I have found that throughout the course, students become frustrated with the scope and depth of the material. Since UCLA is on the quarter system, each course only lasts 10 weeks. During that time, the professor and TA are tasked with imparting knowledge about the birth, life, and evolution of humans life, the solar system, and the universe as a whole while tying in details about biology and chemistry. Discussion sections meet once a week, for a total of 10 meetings (assuming there are no university holidays). We are rushed to cover that much material in so short a time, and the students end up paying the price. They seem to spend the quarter playing catch-up for most of the quarter, seeing the material for the first time (in some cases) just before exams.
Attendance at lectures usually drops severely after the first few classes, regardless of the level of enthusiasm from the professor teaching them. The text book is rarely used (by the students), even when specific chapters are assigned as reading. The students end up clinging to the discussion sections as their primary resource for learning the material, which means that discussion sections must morph into lectures, since most students have yet to learn the content. I don't believe that the problem here is that the students are "lazy" or uninterested in the material. Astrobiology is a topic that resounds strongly with most students. Even with little to no science background, most students have strong opinions about the course material and are interested in active engagement. For whatever reason, it seems that lectures and textbooks don't reach them, and the course structure (as it is used by the students) leave little room for discussion or student participation. The question is: how can we reformat the course in order to give the students true contact with the material in such a way that there will be lasting knowledge learned (not just memorized and forgotten after the exam)?
Engaging Students Using Debate and Role-Playing
As an undergraduate at Barnard College, I took a debate-based course called "Reacting to the Past" which was essentially a semester-long historical role-playing game. Assignments were readings (from primary sources, not textbooks) and speech-writing. The class has ~25 students, split into 3 factions. Each student was given a character card at the beginning of the class that outlined that character's goals and knowledge - everything the student would need to play that character accurately during the course. The teacher became the game master, and would sit in the back of the classroom playing little to no role during the actual class. The students would re-enact historical debates, with two factions trying to convince a third faction of "undecideds" of their point of view. In addition to the faction's goals, each student also had their own personal goals to achieve, some of which were in opposition to the goals of other members of their faction.
While complicated, this course structure resulted in the enthusiastic engagement of every student in the class. Not only were we completely engrossed in the material during class time, but many of us spent significant amounts of time meeting outside of class with out factions to strategize and talk about course content. Check out this article about the student's experience in an RTTP classroom!
As it turns out, Reacting to the Past (RTTP) is a collection of many "games", each with a different scope and timeline. Some can be played in a single class period, and some require several weeks. Most games involve content based in history or literature, while few are based on STEM topics.
Making RTTP Work in STEM Classrooms
The real challenge here is to make a class designed for history work in a STEM classroom. Certain content needs to be covered, especially if the course needs to count for a gen-ed requirement. The trick is to make the content fit into the context a real historical debate. The debate about whether life in the universe is as old as the study of astronomy itself, and has caught the attention of many characters worth playing in an RTTP game. Besides having rich content to pull from, the debate on life in the universe also incites enthusiastic and sometimes emotional responses in students.
My goal is to have the students work through a debate about whether life in the universe exists and, furthermore, whether we will ever make contact. Characters will include planetary scientists, SETI scientists, and members of congress. Over the course of the quarter, more and more "knowledge" will be added to the game (e.g. Week 3 - scientists discovered the first extremophiles!), and the students will have to figure out how new discoveries change the debate. At the end of the quarter, we would have a mock vote to see if SETI gets funding to continue their research. The questions in play will be:
- Is there extraterrestrial life in the universe?
- Is there extraterrestrial life in our galaxy?
- Is there intelligent life in our galaxy?
- Will we ever make contact with extraterrestrial beings?
- What benefits can we glean from the study of life in the universe?
- Is the search for life in the universe worth funding?
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