Learning goals and conceptual difficulties in cell metabolism—an explorative study of university lecturers' views

Abstract

The rapid development and increasing inter-and multi-disciplinarity of life sciences invokes revisions of life science course curricula, recognizing (inter alia) the need to compromise between covering specific phenomena and general processes/principles. For these reasons there have been several initiatives to standardize curricula, and various authors have assessed general curricular requirements. The results have shown that teacher preferences strongly influence both topic arrangement and course content, and that generating consensus among scientists and lecturers is challenging. Applying a somewhat different approach, we have focused on a limited part of the curriculum (cell metabolism). Using Delphi methodology, in four rounds of surveys we investigated phenomena that 15 experienced, practising lecturers consider to be central aspects for students to learn in the cell metabolism module of an introductory university course. The overall aim was to identify learning goals of special concern, i.e., aspects considered by the teachers to be both central and difficult for students to understand. Our informants emphasized learning goals of overarching and principal type, e.g. to be able to couple different system levels (from molecules to cells to organisms) and grasp the interactions between them. However, the teachers also expect students to retain detailed knowledge, e.g. to know the structure of central biomolecules and metabolites. The main result of the study is a ranked list of learning goals of special concern in cell metabolism. We also identified both important learning goals and difficulties that have not been previously reported (even though they are covered by most textbooks), e.g. the necessity of proximity and common intermediates for coupled reactions and that energy production occurs in well-regulated steps.

Design and Implementation of a Tool to Assess Students’ Understanding of Metabolic Pathways Dynamics and Regulation

“…Furthermore, they found that students struggled to apply thermodynamic principles to reactions in sequence and that they had difficulties calculating the energetics of pathways. While these findings reveal important challenges for teaching and learning about metabolism, Degerman and Tibell (2012) found that many metabolic concepts that instructors identify as difficult for students, including regulation of energy-producing steps and interconnection of metabolic networks through shared intermediates, have not been well investigated. Therefore, more work is needed.…”

The polygonal model: A simple representation of biomolecules as a tool for teaching metabolism

“…4 shows the formation of the trans isomer in both metabolic pathways, which results from the first oxidation step of these pathways furnishing fumarate (R1 reaction) and trans enoyl acyl-CoA (R'1 reaction). This way of representing the trans forms demonstrates the visual capacity of the polygonal model to convey structural details and helps to explain similar enzyme activities [20]. Thus, this model could be a useful starting point for further discussions and for stimulating questions regarding metabolism and enzymatic activity.…”

“…The tight schedule of some courses means that the time available for teaching metabolism to students who sometimes do not possess enough knowledge in organic chemistry is often quite limited. In this context, biochemistry teachers expect students to learn the structures of key biomolecules and metabolites [20]. The question then is how to make the best use of the available time, how to get the students involved with molecules, and how to convey a volume of information that is often cold, abstract, and static, while at the same time preserving the students' motivation for learning about metabolism.…”