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Responsive (Re)Design in Problem-Based Education: The Biotech-in-Action Program

Sat, April 10, 2:30 to 4:00pm EDT (2:30 to 4:00pm EDT), SIG Sessions, SIG-Problem-Based Education Structured Poster Session

Abstract

Objective
This ethnographic study examines the work of multiple actors who came together during the COVID-19 pandemic to create an online learning community for 400 underrepresented high school students, biotechnology professionals, and colleagues from academia. We trace how discursive actions among actors contributed to the responsive learning environment and problem-based learning approach that dynamically evolved over five program iterations.

Conceptual Framework: Ethnography as Theory and Method
The conceptual framework guiding this study is based on an interactional ethnographic (IE) approach to analysis of life in social groups (Green, Skukauskaite & Baker, 2012). The approach is grounded in epistemological understandings of cultural practices as situated, contrastive, and holistic (Agar, 2006; Heap, 1991). This necessitates interpreting meaning through language-in-use from sociolinguistic traditions (Gumperz & Cook-Gumperz, 2006, 2008; Hymes, 1972, 1977) where the observables are interactions and meaning is discursively signaled as socially significant (Bloome, Carter, Christian, Otto & Shuart-Faris, 2005). From an IE perspective, cultural practices, and problem-based practices in particular, are continuously developing and can be traced across time, actors and events through intertextual (Bloome et al., 2005) ties. Central to this methodology is using insider/outsider ethnographers (first and second authors) (Green & Bridges, 2018) who, working with instructors, conducted IE analyses continuously to inform modifications to the multiple program iterations.

Modes of inquiry
Multiple forms of analysis and triangulation of data, including what actors proposed to each other and what was taken up by others, supported our exploring of the multiple iterations of the developing program. Taxonomic analysis (Spradley, 2006) was used to document the network of actors and their roles and relationships. Discourse analysis of video records (Green, Skukauskaite, Dixon & Cordova, 2007) and texts produced grounded accounts as the basis for contrastive analysis of the week-to-week changes to the program and how these changes were taken up by students.

Data sources
Program artifacts, such as pre and post student experience surveysvideo records, and transcripts, provide first-hand accounts of over time challenges and decisions. Iterative changes and student responses to the iterative changes are further explored in ten student and eight instructor interviews.

Results
In a series of contrastive analyses of discourse, activity, and events, this study shows the overtime challenges and the team’s iterative responses to (re)designing the program to improve the effectiveness of problem-based instructional practices. For example, one of the challenges in Week 1 identified by instructors and recognized by ethnographers in their observations was lack of student-student engagement, which instructors addressed by adding additional team-based opportunities early in the week. The study also made visible the roles and relationships of actors and the expertise required to create this type of complex program.

Scholarly significance
This study contributes a warranted account of iterative change to problem-based instructional practices in an online environment. This study also contributes methodological directions by showing how an interactional ethnographic perspective can be used to uncover the layers of work required to negotiate any change process especially within the complex social and cultural environments of collaborative endeavors between academia and industry.

Authors