Progress updates from Prof. Ruiyu XIE of FHS

To engage students’ learning, I use a blended learning platform to mix traditional face-to-face instruction and various teaching methodologies in this course. Typically, students view short video lectures at home before the class session, while in-class time is devoted to first review the fundamental concepts they have learned from the video lecture followed by a series of exercises and discussions. To help students in learning advanced concepts, I provide concrete “case” to teach them how to logically use the experimental approaches to establish cell biology findings. Particularly, a series of scientific phenomena are given to students who work in groups to formulate a testable hypothesis based on provided observations. Subsequently, students design experiments to test their hypotheses, and then analyze mock experimental data to draw their own conclusions. Finally, students explore the original research paper related to the “Case study” and complete individual assay to answer essential scientific questions, such as “What is the hypothesis? What experiments the authors did to test their hypothesis? Did their data support their conclusion?”

Exercises keep students actively involving in class and stimulate their interests and enthusiasm in the learning process. Most students like these teaching/learning formats. However, some students have difficulty to follow the exercises/discussion sections. I will increase the review section in-class and provide more short exercises/discussions besides the “Case studies” in the future.