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TEACHING STRATEGIES IN THE SCIENCES: THE ANCIENT ART OF STORY TELLING

Karobi Moitra, PhD Department of Biology, Trinity Washington University, College Of Arts And Sciences, 125 Michigan Avenue NE, Washington DC 20017. Email: MoitraK@trinitydc.edu

THE ANCIENT ART OF STORY TELLING

RESEARCH METHODS

1. Students were administered pre course and post course tests

consisting of 10 questions, the results were graphed in MS excel

and 2-tailed paired t-tests were carried out to assess if students

improved their results on the test post course.

2. A survey was administered to the students post-course

to determine the influence of the story-telling pedagogy

employed in the course.

3. Student surveys were conducted using the standard Trinity

course evaluation online survey - specifically student

comments about the course were pooled.

4. Research papers were consulted to research background

information.

STORY TELLING IN AN INTRODUCTORY GENETICS

CLASSROOM

THE RECIPE FOR AN EFFECTIVE STORY

RESULTS ASSESSMENT DATA

CONCLUSIONS & DISCUSSION

LECTURES MODIFIED FOR

STORY-TELLING!

RESULTS

.

Stories are effective educational tools because listeners become engaged and remember the story

Find a good story to tell

Build the framework for your

story

Add the educational content

Finally put it all together

Storytelling predates writing. The earliest forms of storytelling were primarily oral combined with

gestures and expressions. The Australian aboriginal people painted symbols from stories on cave walls to help the story-teller remember the story. With the advent of writing and the arrival of portable media, stories were transcribed and shared all over the world. Homer the great Greek poet was a storyteller who lived around 850 BC. The Iliad of Homer is the oldest work of western literature.

�I �This class was definitely worth taking.�

�I like how she kept the class an interesting learning experience overall.�

�This class was a class worth-taking she is an awesome teacher.�

�Really enjoyed the class this semester.�

STUDENT COMMENTS

Graph 1. Pre and Post-Course Assessment Data for Introductory Genetics, BIOL 241 [Fall 2012/2013 compiled] The students were given 2 assessments, one at the start of the course and the same one at the end of the course. The assessment contained 10 questions and the time given to complete the assessment was 20 minutes. Graph 1 shown was plotted in MS-Excel and shows the percentage of correct answers per question, before and after the course was taken [n1= 20, n 2=17]. [BIOL 241-Fall 2012 & Fall 2013 data compiled].

!  Story-telling engages students and as a result they are able to learn better

!  The story-telling technique lends itself very well to the unique Trinity demographic !  Students enjoy this technique of teaching !  Student evaluation data shows significant gains in knowledge over the semester I have demonstrated in this pilot study that story telling in the Genetics classroom engaged at-risk students and motivated them to do well on subsequent tests. This

method of teaching can be introduced into science pedagogy to motivate and engage students. In the future, I will conduct more in-depth surveys to address

more specific questions to improve this kind of pedagogy.

References: 1. Cajete, G, Eder D, and Holyan R. Life Lessons through Storytelling: Children's Exploration of Ethics. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2010. 2. Wells, S. The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey. Princeton University Press, 2002.

INTRODUCTION

THE TRINITY STORY

Story telling is an ancient art which originated long before the written word. Stories can be leveraged as effective educational

tools because they engage the students and enable them to easily recall facts from the story. The course Genetics 241

(Introductory Genetics) was designed keeping this in mind. The student learning assessments show that this choice of pedagogy proved to be an effective teaching method.

! To determine if story-telling is an effective tool in teaching an undergraduate Genetics course

!  To assess student learning outcomes pre and post course

! To evaluate if this mode of pedagogy is suited to the unique Trinity demographic and if the students were engaged during the course and enjoyed this type of pedagogy

AIMS & OBJECTIVES

ABSTRACT

Trinity students are usually the first generation in their family to go to college. The Trinity mission - teaching women who have limited access to education has allowed us to remain a traditional women�s college. Accordingly we have created a science curriculum to maintain rigor and high expectations while delivering courses to students that are under represented and under prepared.

We have focused on pedagogy rather than

distilling course content

Graph 3. Post-Course (Story Telling) Survey Data for Introductory Genetics, BIOL 241, Fall 2013. The students took the survey before final exams. Graph 2 was plotted in MS-Excel and shows the number of students responding to each statement [n= 9].

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Pre-Test Post-Test

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Graph 2. Box ad Whisker Plot of pre and post test scores demonstrating gain in knowledge. The distribution of scores are plotted above. The black boxes make up the middle half of all scores (the second and third quartiles) with the median score dividing the two middle quartiles. The whiskers represent the range of the upper and lower 25% of all scores. The average scores are indicated with red circles. Change in ability observed: The difference between the pre-test and post-test scores (47.6%) was statistically significant using a two-tailed paired t-test: t(16), p < 0.001. The magnitude of this difference has a very large effect size (Cohen's d = 3.36). The class did much better on the post-test than they did on the pre-test. There has been a tremendous gain in knowledge over the semester.

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