cjrw240309

Pedagogic Research in the Biosciences 2009 Reflections on the paper: Teaching about bioethics through authoring of websites Dr Chris Willmott Dept of Biochemistry University of Leicester [email_address] THE University of the Year 2008 University of Leicester

The Paper Journal of Biological Education 39 :27-31 (2004) University of Leicester

Why this paper?

Not from Bioscience Education - former Editor - relevance to secondary education too

“ entry-level” education research

Adding pre- and post-testing to course development that was going to take place anyway

Feedback and Evaluation Baseline Evaluation University of Leicester New Teaching Activity

The Activity

Students work in teams of 4-5 to produce a website reviewing other web-based materials on a specified bioethical topic

Should include a background briefing on science underlying the issue and fairly reflect the diversity of informed ethical opinion on the topic

Also give a 15 min presentation of their site to peers

University of Leicester

The Context

“ Targeting biochemical knowledge to medical problems”

Core for medical biochemists (~ 30)

Optional study skills module for medics (~ 10)

Run annually since 2002

Aims and Objectives

Appreciate the science underlying a current controversial development in biomedicine

Recognise the diversity of ethical opinion regarding the development of a current controversial development in biomedicine

Distinguish the veracity of different web-based resources

Use web-authoring software

Work as a member of a team

Present their website to peers

Training - lecture

Recognise strong features of well-known websites (Uni homepage, BBC, Amazon, Guardian)

Practical advice on authoring web pages (using Microsoft FrontPage), including: - designing a page - developing a page into a web - a quick look at some simple HTML

Tips, tricks and warnings

Details of assessed activity

Training – hands-on exercise

Instructions e-mailed to students

2 hr session, supervised

Asked to produce simple website, inc - absolute links (to WWW) - relative links (within web) - copy, paste and format text - copy and paste images

Compress as zipped folder and e-mail to me

Receive rapid feedback (formative)

Topics (2003)

Genetic patenting

Therapeutic cloning and stem cell research

Use of human material (inc foetal tissue)

Genetic screening (inc PGD)

Clinical trials (inc use of placebos)

Use of animals in research & alternatives

Healthcare and developing countries

Gene therapy

Xenotransplantation

Assessment of exercise

66% for the website

34% for the presentation

Peer assessment to weight allocation of marks within a team (adapted from Conway et al , 1993)

Contributing overall 20% to mark for module

Instruments for evaluation

‘ Matched’ questionnaire before and after activity

Additional qualitative feedback on training

Candidate numbers use to pair Pre-/Post- responses

The Questionnaire

Students asked to:

Write a definition for “bioethics”

List up to 10 bioethical topics (open, but numbered)

Self-assess knowledge of bioethics (scale 0 to 10)

Self-assess interest in bioethics (scale 0 to 10)

Name sources of bioethics info

Report on previous web-authoring experience

Self-assess interest in website production (scale 0 to 10)

The Questionnaire (2)

Post-intervention questionnaire also asked:

Self-assess ability to produce websites (scale 0 to 10)

Usefulness of exercise (scale 0 to 10)

Self-assess enjoyment of exercise (scale 0 to 10)

Suggest improvements to activity

Indicate if they would (hypothetically) feel able to write an essay on the science or ethics of topic

Indicate time spent on the activity

Feedback on training “ I have never tried anything like this before and I could actually do it, which I didn’t expect!” “ I’d always thought that designing a web page would be a very difficult thing, but the step-by-step instructions made the hole (sic) thing very painless and easy to understand. The lecture last week was a great introduction to web-design, so that coming to this practical. I had some idea what I was doing. Thanks very much A*” “ This was a very useful exercise because I had no idea before where to start if I wanted to design a web page, but it is something that I wanted to be able to do.” University of Leicester

Evaluation by participants Questionnaire-based survey before and after activity in 2002 and 2003 (n = 69, score out of 10) Ability to produce a website (after) = 7.1 out of 10 Only 11 out of 72 had any prior experience Category Before After Change Knowledge about Bioethics 2.53 6.61 + 4.08 Interest in Bioethics 5.80 6.84 + 1.04 Interest in Web authoring 6.13 6.51 + 0.38

Bioethics issues listed by students * % of cohort citing topic (only topics mentioned by > 50% on at least one occasion are included) Topic 2002 Before 2002 After 2003 Before 2003 After Xenotransplantation 25.7* 44.1 10.8 92.1 Cloning 77.1 50.0 89.2 29.0 Animal expts/testing 48.6 85.3 37.8 73.7 Use of human tissue/organs 5.7 44.1 2.7 73.7 Gene patenting 0 35.3 0 68.4 Genetic screening 14.3 67.7 2.7 29.0 Gene therapy 5.7 61.8 5.4 55.3

Topics identified in first place 2002 (before) 2003 (before) Cloning (16) Animal experiments (4) Gen engin./modfictn (3) Xenotransplantation (3) Cloning (19) Animal experiments (5) Euthanasia (3) 2002 (after) 2003 (after) Gene therapy (7) Animal experiments (5) Xenotransplantation (4) Genetic screening (5) Gene patenting (3) Xenotransplantation (13) Use of stem cells (5) Gene therapy (4) Gene patenting (3)

What we did right

Use of baseline questionnaire allowed for analysis of intervention impact

Combination of free-text questions and numerical response questions

Adding number spaces allowed for analysis of prioritisation of topics not just awareness

Including information from two different cohorts added to validity

Warts and all?

Question phrasing – students may have meant very different things by same ‘x out of 10’ on scales, e.g. for enjoyment (though we did individual matches)