Using Collaborative and Problem-Based Learning in an Undergraduate Bioinformatics Course at BITS Pilani

EasyChair Preprint 6164

Abstract

Critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity, and problem-solving skills are five essential attributes that ensure that students are well equipped in working under 21^st-century challenges across research and practice settings. Despite their importance, only a few Biology Undergraduate courses have implemented these graduate skills fully or partially or tried to change their course structure to evaluate curriculum activities. The current study reports on implementing a hands-on tutorial programme designed to enhance students’ active learning, collaboration, communication, and problem-solving skills of undergraduate biology students. The blending of collaborative and problem-based learning in the hands-on tutorial course was administered two subsequent years to 51(2019-20) and 75 (2020-21) third-year undergraduate students in Bioinformatics. The qualitative feedback of students revealed that students preferred this problem Based hands-on tutorial teaching style over the traditional lecture-based format.  Also, the individual-specific problem approach generates interest, engagement, and positive experiences among the students. The assessment of such pedagogical intervention was evaluated by the quality and novelty of the students’ manuscripts or end semester reports and their respective feedback about their perception of this new intervention. The findings also suggest that the development of collaborative, problem-based actively engaged the students in the hands-on sessions, which helped them gain much-needed practical experience by getting exposed to various tools and databases. These hands-on sessions allowed students to acquire the required graduate skills to achieve learning outcomes and complete their end-semester project. The results also revealed that students rated hands-on experiences as coherent and well-structured as it has a rationale that helped them understand the theory better.

Keyphrases: Hands-on Tutorial, Problem Based Learning, collaborative learning

@booklet{EasyChair:6164,
  author    = {Ashish Katyal and Manoj Kannan},
  title     = {Using Collaborative and Problem-Based Learning in an Undergraduate Bioinformatics Course at BITS Pilani},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 6164},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}