Education renewal project (OVP) 2008: From hearings to active think-tank. Pilots in the biological sciences. (VLO190)

Problem: Our teaching experience teaches us that in the biology study program, the traditional form of teaching in which the teacher / assistant teaches and the student must assimilate the offered knowledge, does not always work efficiently. This problem is certain when we realize that (i) students use different learning styles and (ii) this assimilation method is insufficient to process a number of biological concepts in a critical and profound way. This situation is not new and is expressed in different aspects during all years of the study program, both in the Bachelor and in Master. Education models should therefore be developed that not only enable the student to develop a sustainable knowledge base, but also to acquire practical skills. In order to achieve this goal, extra attention must be paid to new skills training. In our view this can be achieved by moving away from the current, rather passive, unimedial educational landscape. The alternative is the switch to an active multimodal model where the students "learn by doing". As a result, we propose a series of methods to transform the classroom lectures into active think tanks.

Target audience: In this pilot study we aim for Biology students of the third Bachelor year and the two Master years, with the Erasmus students included. After this pilot project we hope that this can be opened up to other scientific disciplines, as well as the entire VUB community. These study years were chosen because during the first two years of the program, students gather a lot of knowledge and learn a number of skills, but they have little chance to bring these two aspects together and use them in practice.

Keywords:Biology