Undergraduate Biology Instructors Still Use Mostly Teacher-Centered Discourse Even When Teaching with Active Learning Strategies

Abstract

Reform efforts in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instruction often emphasize student-centered teaching approaches, but relatively little attention is paid to the way STEM teachers use discourse when interacting with their students. In the present study, we examined the instructional and discourse behaviors of biology faculty members (N = 20) teaching in undergraduate biology classes. Although we found that the biology teachers spent most of their time guiding student learning in active learning activities and less time presenting, an analysis of their classroom communicative approaches showed that the participants mostly used authoritative and not dialogic discourse to teach biology content. Similarly, we found a strong positive correlation between biology teachers guiding student learning and authoritative, interactive approaches, suggesting that these teachers mostly asked the students to recall facts or basic concepts rather than asking them to collaboratively build knowledge. We describe the implications of these findings and our results for undergraduate biology instruction.

Breakout Rooms, Polling, and Chat, Oh My! The Development and Validation of Online COPUS

“…However, COPUS provides an objective account of the amount of active learning occurring in the classroom (Smith et al, 2013). Also, it has been a useful tool to document in-person active learning activities at different levels, such as at the department (Kranzfelder et al, 2020), the institutional , and at multi-institutional levels (Akiha et al, 2018;Smith et al, 2013;Stains et al, 2018), as well as to document the impacts of educational initiatives for research (Akiha et al, 2018;Lund et al, 2015;Stains et al, 2018), professional development (Reisner et al, 2020;Tomkin et al, 2019), and tenure, merit, and promotion (Reisner et al, 2020). COPUS findings have also been clustered in different ways to compare results (Denaro et al, 2021) and has been used in combination with other tools, such the Classroom Discourse Observation Protocol (CDOP), (Kranzfelder, Bankers-Fulbright, et al, 2019).…”

“…COPUS findings have also been clustered in different ways to compare results (Denaro et al, 2021) and has been used in combination with other tools, such the Classroom Discourse Observation Protocol (CDOP), (Kranzfelder, Bankers-Fulbright, et al, 2019). Moreover, COPUS results can be offered as an instructor-friendly visual representation documenting the frequency of instructors' use of active learning practices for different purposes (Kranzfelder et al, 2020;Reisner et al, 2020;Smith et al, 2014).…”

“…We used the collapsed categories developed by Smith et al (2014) to compare instructor's in-person COPUS to the E-COPUS data and Kranzfelder, Lo, et al (2019) to compare student's in-person COPUS to the E-COPUS data. To determine any differences among the collapsed COPUS codes by class format, we followed Smith et al (2014), Lewin et al (2016), andKranzfelder et al (2020) to examine the average percentage of COPUS codes implemented between each instructor's in-person and online class sessions. To do this, we took the sum of a singular COPUS/E-COPUS code (i.e., lecturing) and divided it by the total number of codes that appeared within the class session.…”

“…We selected Macie's class sessions for analysis because they had the highest increase in instructor Guiding between inperson and online instruction as shown in Figure 1. To compare Macie's individual COPUS and E-COPUS codes, we took the number of two-minute time intervals marked for each individual code and divided it by the total of two-minute time intervals for the class session (Kranzfelder et al, 2020;Lewin et al, 2016;Lund et al, 2015). This calculation overestimates the time spent on a particular code as the behavior is counted for the entire two-minute interval even if the instructor only spends a few seconds on it.…”

“…As we continue to assess the online learning environment, E-COPUS could be complemented by pairing it with other tools to study other variables which influence online instruction. Teacher discourse moves, or the conversational strategies used by instructors to encourage student engagement in science content (Kranzfelder et al, 2020;Warfa et al, 2014), has not yet been studied in the online learning environment. Observing instructor discourse alongside instructor behaviors can reveal the quality of active learning strategies used by instructors in the online learning environment.…”