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June 22, 2011
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Dr. Rachel Robson |
Dr. Susan Burns |
Rachel Robson, assistant professor of biology at Morningside College, and Susan Burns, associate dean for academic affairs, collaborated on an article that was published in the May issue of the Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education.
The article is about a teaching technique Robson developed at Morningside to help students understand the role of random mutations in evolution. Robson said this is an important concept for students to understand so they can know how to effectively combat growing problems such as antibiotic resistance in bacteria and pesticide resistance in insects. No teaching technique has ever been shown to improve students’ understanding of this concept before.
With Robson’s teaching technique, students are led through a process where they end up replicating a Nobel Prize-winning experiment on how bacteria become resistant to viruses that would otherwise kill the bacteria. The students do not know in advance that the experiment they’re conducting has been done before. The students make the same discovery the Nobel Laureates did, discuss their results and come up with a consensus interpretation of the data.
Robson and Burns showed that, following this lesson, students were more than two times better at explaining how genetic mutations occur than they were before the lesson. Burns’ role was to collect and analyze data regarding the teaching technique.
Robson joined the biology and chemistry department at Morningside College in 2007. She has a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Kansas in Lawrence and a doctorate in pathology and laboratory medicine from the University of Kansas Medical Center.
Burns became associate dean for academic affairs in 2010 after teaching psychology at Morningside College for several years. She has a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree and a doctorate in the field of psychology.
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