Grant program: Teaching and Learning Development Grant (TLDG)

Grant recipient: Uwe Kreis, Department of Chemistry

Project team: Daria Ahrensmeier, Teaching and Learning Centre, Zamir Punja, Department of Biological Sciences, and Andrew Wylie, research assistant

Timeframe: January to July 2014

Funding: $5,000

Course addressed: BISC 372 – Brewing Science

Final report: View Uwe Kreis' final project report (PDF)

Description: BISC 372 is taught by a teaching team and by external expert speakers. The course is open to, and enrolled by students from all faculties, including those outside of the Faculty of Science. Students work in interdisciplinary teams to help enhance each others’ understanding of their respective disciplines. This project broadly seeks to examine the interaction within these teams and to understand how the application of science within the brewing industry can help develop an understanding of science. To examine these, a variety of kinds of approaches will be taken, including: concept map testing both at the beginning and end of the course, conducting focus groups, interviewing instructors, and web surveys.

Questions addressed:

• How well is this course format working? We are interested in this question because of the many new aspects of the course, including an interdisciplinary teaching team, guest lecturers, and an active industry partner.
  • a) What are student and instructor perceptions of the effectiveness of the following course elements in terms of learning and creating interest: interdisciplinary teaching team, guest lecturers, student teams, industry partner?
  • b) What are student and instructor perceptions about how well aspects of the course are integrated in terms of the learning experience?
  • c) Are there differences between science students and other students in terms of their perception of the effectiveness of the course design or integration?
    
• Questions regarding the student experience
  • a) Does the students’ perception of science evolve during the course, in particular regarding understanding of the scientific method?
  • b) Are there differences in the responses of science students and other students?
  • c) How much of this development do the participants think is due to them interacting with other students from different academic backgrounds?

Knowledge sharing:        

• Presentation at the Symposium for Teaching and Learning.
• Presentation on the (yet to be developed) website of the Network for Science Education (a new project related to the INSPIRE initiative in the Faculty of Science).
• Possible presentation at the 2014 STEM conference at UBC.

This course and project, as the first of its kind within the Faculty of Science, will help to direct future opportunities in a team teaching approach and broad outreach to other faculties as well as support future projects within the faculty.

Ahrensmeier, D., Wylie, A., Punja, Z., & Kreis, U. (2014, July). Tracking understanding and appreciation of science in an interdisciplinary brewing science course. Poster session presented at the International Conference on Chemistry Education (ICCE), Toronto, ON.

Kreis, U., Ahrensmeier, D., Punja, Z., & Wylie, A. (2014, July). Blowing up the ivory tower: A course design workshop centered around interdisciplinarity. Presentation at the 39th Annual International Conference on Improving University Teaching, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC. 

Kreis, U., Ahrensmeier, D., Punja, Z., & Wylie, A. (2014, May). Interdisciplinary course development: Learning from our experience in designing brewing science. Workshop conducted at the Symposium on Teaching and Learning: Provocative Pedagogy, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC.

Wylie, A., Ahrensmeier, D., Punja, Z., & Kreis, U. (2014, July). Interdisciplinarity teaching team, active industry partner, students across disciplines: Our learnings and their learnings. Paper presented at the 39th Annual International Conference on Improving University Teaching, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC.

Wylie, A., Ahrensmeier, D., Punja, Z., & Kreis, U. (2014, May). Tracking the student and instructor experience through the team-taught interdisciplinary problem-based course “brewing science”. Poster session presented at the Symposium on Teaching and Learning: Provocative Pedagogy, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC. 

Keywords: Interdisciplinary, survey, interviews, focus groups, concept mapping