The Call of the Story:Innovative Approaches in STEM Classrooms

Karobi Moitra PhDCBL Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology

Trinity Washington UniversityLilly Conference, Bethesda 30th May 2014

Learning is not a spectator sport!

Students need to get involved in their own learning

What are the instructional strategies that get students

involved?

BIOL 241- Introductory geneticsA Case Study in story telling

MULTIMEDIALEARNING

• PPT PRESENTTIONS• DESIGNING A

WEBSITE

PAPER CRITIQUE

WRITING• TERM PAPER

• CASE STUDIES• EXAMS

• QUIZZES

FUNGENETICS JEOPARDY

LECTURES

STORY-TELLING

FUNMOVIES

MULTIMEDIATEACHING• YOU TUBE

VIDEOS• DVD’S

INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES

USED IN BIOL241

PBLGROUP PROBLEM

SOLVINGCASE STUDIESDISCUSSION

MULTIMEDIALEARNING

• PPT PRESENTTIONS• DESIGNING A

WEBSITE

PAPER CRITIQUE

WRITING• TERM PAPER

• CASE STUDIES• EXAMS

• QUIZZES

FUNGENETICS JEOPARDY

LECTURES

STORY-TELLING

FUNMOVIES

MULTIMEDIATEACHING• YOU TUBE

VIDEOS• DVD’S

INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES

USED IN BIOL241

PBLGROUP PROBLEM

SOLVINGCASE STUDIESDISCUSSION

LECTURES

STORY-TELLING

Biology 241: Introductory Genetics Syllabus

successful Storytellers will tell you…

It’s not always about what you say:

It’s how you say it

Where do You start?

Information overload!

Look for your story

The story of us: the incredible journey of man

I read the entire book and condensed it into a 45 min lecture

Step 1: Build the framework for your story

Like this:

Step2: Add your Content

And you have the perfect storyline…….

Storytelling in the sciences 101:

Deconstructing the storytelling process

3 questions:

Why are we here?

Where are we going?

Where did we come from?

1.Have a strong Storyline- bring your audience in

The journey of the ‘y’ chromosome

2.Element of mystery- don’t give away the ending!

But how do we know That thisJourney started in africa?

?

3. Let students solve various parts of the mystery with clues (INTERACTIVE)

We know because we can trace certainDna markers

from human populations

Markers on dna

A marker on DNA is a landmark that tells you where you are in the genome

4. Add audio-visual content (you tube videos, DVD movies

5. Stress that people are as important as the science

Scientists are HUMAN, don’t be afraid of SCIENCE, specially not Genetics!

The Genographic project and Spencer Wells

https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/

6. Discussion- encourage all students to take part

Introduce the concept of ‘Safe space’

7. Integrate biological techniques into the story- the boring stuff !

8. Make the take home message very clear.

What did you learn?

• People look different because of isolation and adaptations to different environments

• Underneath all of that we are virtually the same

we are all connected

We are the same

What percentage of DNA do you share With the person

sitting next to you?

we share 99.9% of Our Dna with every singleperson On this earth

9. Let the students apply their knowledge

- case study - paper- website (WIX) - video (Xtranormal), - Journal/map- Poster- Infographic- Concept map etc.

10. Have fun with it!

Think about how story-telling can be applied across disciplines