Writing to Learn Physiology: Leveraging Peer Review to Enhance Learning in a Large Enrollment Undergraduate Physiology Course

Abstract

A significant challenge in STEM education is to transform undergraduate students from memorizers of scientific facts to critical, conceptual, scientific thinkers. Although increasing evidence supports the use of “Writing to Learn” (WTL) activities to promote higher‐level conceptual thinking ( Reynolds et al. 2012), WTL activities are not yet widely implemented in undergraduate science classrooms. Several barriers prevent the incorporation of WTL activities including the feasibility of grading written assignments in large enrollment classes and the degree of student participation and active engagement in such activities. Here we report a pilot study to evaluate the feasibility of and student participation in WTL activities in an undergraduate foundational physiology course with an enrollment of 250 students. The writing activity was a short response (3–5 sentences) to a prompt that asked the students to evaluate or explain a statement related to a physiological concept. The students submitted their responses to a web‐based peer‐review service ( EliReview.com), and then each student reviewed the work of four anonymous peers. Once the reviews were completed, each student viewed the anonymous reviews that he/she received and constructed a revision plan to improve the original submission. One instructor oversaw and managed this process, with technological support from Eli Review, but without TA support. Students were incentivized to participate in this activity by receiving a small number of bonus points (equivalent to 0.25% of their final grade). Primary study outcome measures were (1) student participation in the activity and (2) student perceptions of the activity. Secondary outcome measures included performance on exam questions related to the WTL activity topics, compared to students in a different section of the same course who did not participate in the WTL activities (secondary outcomes not yet analyzed at the time of abstract submission). Preliminary results of two trials of WTL activities during the Fall 2019 semester show that an average of 57% of students enrolled in the class submitted their written assignment to the web‐based peer review system. Of the students who submitted writing, an average of 85% completed four reviews of their peers’ work and an average of 68% completed revision plans based on the peer feedback they received. The average length of the peer reviews was 309 words, even though no word maximum or minimum was specified. No student reported inappropriate or disrespectful comments. In an in‐class electronic poll, 70% of students who participated in the activities agreed with the statement that “The opportunity to read and review drafts submitted by other students helped me to better understand the physiological principles related to the question”. The preliminary results of utilizing WTL activities in our 250‐student physiology class indicate that this is a feasible and time‐effective strategy to incorporate writing into the undergraduate biology curriculum, and that many students will participate and perceive a benefit from participating in such activities.Support or Funding InformationEVV and WFC were supported in part by NSF grant #1524967