Team-teaching an interdisciplinary undergraduate bioethics course
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Team-teaching an interdisciplinary undergraduate bioethics course Jennifer L. Hess 1
& Bryan
C. Pilkington 2
# Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The authors, one a trained geneticist and the other a trained ethicist, designed and teamtaught a bioethics course where nineteen third- and fourth-year undergraduate students were enrolled at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, during the fall 2016 semester. The syllabus, including democratically-chosen ethical debate topics, peer-led student working groups, and varied assessment methods were novel aspects of the course. The students, being either philosophy or biology majors or minors, successfully completed the course and indicated being highly satisfied with the course at its completion. Although there were limitations to a course such as this one, educators at similar small liberal arts institutions could offer a bioethics course by following our suggestions, including collaborative teaching and assessment and incorporating students’ preferences into the scheduled curriculum. Keywords Bioethics . Multidisciplinary teaching
Introduction If one does not teach at a small liberal arts college (SLAC), one might think that the small size of such a college would facilitate interaction and collaboration between faculty from various disciplines and departments. This is not necessarily true, either at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where approximately 1600 undergraduates study, or probably at any SLAC. At Aquinas, there is a literal wooden bridge over a small creek that separates the science building from the rest of the campus. This Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s40889-02000101-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Jennifer L. Hess [email protected]
1
Department of Biology and Health Science, Aquinas College, Grand Rapids MI 49506 USA
2
School of Medicine, Seton Hall University, Nutley NJ 07110 USA
Hess J. L., Pilkington B. C.
bridge symbolizes the division that, on our campus, maintains the academic siloing of faculty. Biologists tend to cross that bridge only when they must, and not many faculty from other departments frequently cross this bridge, either. In recent years, however, data have been amassing that suggest interdisciplinary teamteaching is a high-impact pedagogical practice (Hensley 2015; Shibley 2006). Just as employers and graduate schools are expecting college graduates from all disciplines to be able to think critically and to problem-solve, students must also learn to work in teams where members have varied educational backgrounds (Clemens and McElroy 2011). Students need to be prepared not only with knowledge in their chosen fields, but also be prepared to listen to others and to effectively communicate their ideas to group members, both verbally and in writing, and to persuade those team members to follow their directives. The traditional college biology curriculum does a consistently adequate job preparing stu
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