Introduction
Biochemistry 1 is a 4 credit course with 3 hours of lecture and a 4 hour lab. The character of both the lab and the lecture have changed over the last several years. The movement is toward promoting cooperative group learning in the lab and the use of phased animations in lecture.
Lecture
The Biochemistry lecture has gone to a complete PowerPoint presentation. PowerPoint slides shown in class are available at the course website. All PowerPoint slides are now presented in phased fashion. Different animation or phasing is used for different types of material.
The use of phased PowerPoint in metabolism is different in that the tool (PowerPoint) enhances underlying content and pedagogy. The learning of each biochemical pathway requires both memorization and chemical and biological insight. In order to help students "learn" each pathway and the underlying "sense" of the pathway, a starting memory device is provided. This skeleton memory device is then built upon in several layers. The student can then fill in the "pieces" (structures) in (hopefully) an ordered way. Since this approach has been adopted there has been a significant increase in student comprehension and understanding of pathways. The specifics of how this approach works for glycolysis has been reported in the following article: Schultz, E., A Guided Discovery Approach for Learning Glycolysis, Biochemical Education 1997, 25, 205-208. The specifics for gluconeogeneis and the citric acid cycle have been reported in the following article: Schultz, E., A Guided Discovery Approach for Learning Metabolic Pathways, Biochem. Mol. Biol. Educ. 2005, 33, 1-7
Phased Presentations of Metabolic Pathways
If you have PowerPoint from Office 97 or higher you can check out how the phased presentations work. Each is a little bit different. The underlying memory device is presented first and then the pathway is fleshed out. The lecture in the classroom fills in the details of how each step is done. The student can focus more on the rationate than furiously copying (sometimes incorrectly) the information that was formerly on the blackboard. This website and the animations are available to students for study.
To use the animated presentation:
click on the pathway name
click on the first slide in the slide sorter
click on the PowerPoint viewer
either click with your mouse or hit enter and go through the step by step presentation
If you have any questions click on the email address at the bottom of this page
I'd appreciate any comments you might have about the use of the PowerPoint presentations. eschultz@bloomu.edu