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Media Relations
Kansas State University
9 Anderson Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506
785-532-6415
media@k-state.edu

Information provided by K-State Media Relations, K-State's news service, may be reproduced without permission. The marks and names of Kansas State University are protected trademarks and may not be used in any commercial or private endeavor without the approval of the university.

Source: Beth Montelone 785-532-6092, bethmont@k-state.edu
Photos available. Contact media@k-state.edu or 785-532-6415.
News release prepared by: Stephanie Jacques, 785-532-0101, sjacques@ksu.edu

Monday, June 9, 2008

NEW ASSESSMENT SHOWS K-STATE'S PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY STUDIO FORMAT AN EFFECTIVE WAY FOR STUDENTS TO LEARN

Manhattan -- Move over chalkboards and overheads, a different format for teaching is having success in the classroom.

According to data released in the 2008 summer issue of Cell Biology Education -- A Journal of Life Science Education, the studio format is an effective method for teaching students in principles of biology, an introductory course in the Division of Biology at Kansas State University.

The studio format uses computer simulations, teamwork with peers, scientific equipment, hands-on lab experiments, studio manuals and mini lectures by faculty at the beginning and end of the class period to teach students. The assessment, written by Division of Biology professors Beth Montelone, principles of biology restructuring committee chair; David Rintoul, senior coordinator of the studio format; and Larry Williams, coordinator of the course's previous audio-tutorial format, evaluates data collected since the course's conversion to a studio format in 1997 and compares the studio to other teaching format options.

"A committee was appointed to investigate all possibilities and all concepts to teach introductory biology," said Brian Spooner, university distinguished professor and director of the Division of Biology. "The investigation took a year and the physical and course content revisions took another year, but principles of biology became the first studio approach to introductory biology nationally."

The previous format, audio-tutorial, was an isolated and self-driven approach. Students listened to audiotapes during class and followed along in the book and lab manual, while performing lab experiments by themselves, thus limiting student and instructor interaction. The studio format encourages student attendance, interaction and teamwork while providing a variety of resources that cater to all four different learning styles: audio, reading/writing, visual and kinesthetic.

"The studio format really has something for everybody," said Montelone, who also is associate dean of K-State's College of Arts and Sciences.

"Whatever the student's preferred learning style, they can find it -- and even if they aren't aware that they have a preferred learning style, we give them so many choices that it makes it a lot more feasible for them to learn effectively," she said.

The assessment measures include data for the last eight semesters of the audio-tutorial format and the last 20 semesters of the studio format. Data collected is based on student test performance, final course grade distributions, student and instructor perceptions and attitudes, student performance in subsequent biology courses, and student learning through pretests and posttests in the studio format. The studio format also is compared with historical records from the audio-tutorial format and with traditional lecture-lab courses at K-State and elsewhere.

"I think that even though we can't do the direct comparison of student learning between studio and audio-tutorial, that it is a better course now. Students have more opportunities to learn," Montelone said.

In a post-test evaluation, students from the studio format rated their skills in "doing experiments" and "working with others" higher than students from the audio-tutorial format, while audio-tutorial students rated skills higher for "writing lab reports." The data also concluded that there are fewer students failing the course and fewer students formally withdrawing from the course under the studio format compared to the audio-tutorial format.

Montelone said that the principles of biology studio format also offers some important advantages. Unlike a traditional lecture/lab format where one faculty member runs a 500-seat lecture and graduate teaching assistants attend to the labs, students in principles of biology are taught in a smaller studio format twice a week by teams of two faculty members and two graduate teaching assistants for each of the eight to 10 sections of the course offered a semester.

"Faculty time is a lot more expensive than graduate teaching assistant time, so the fact that we are using many faculty members to teach this intro course shows you how important we think it is," Montelone said.