In the spring 2024 semester, I had the privilege to develop and teach a brand new undergraduate course at UBC: Biology of Cannabis – BIOL 348. This wasn’t my first time developing or teaching a course; prior to coming to UBC I was a biology faculty at a community college in Los Angeles, where my heavy teaching load also involved the design of several courses. Nevertheless, BIOL 348 presented a new challenge for me.
For the past six years I’ve served as a Science Education Specialist in the Botany department at UBC, where I have been able to greatly expand my understanding of the theory and practice of undergraduate biology education. With many new pedagogical strategies now in my teaching toolkit, I saw BIOL 348 as an opportunity to put all of my knowledge, skills, and expertise into practice, kind of like a capstone project.
And I did – I put everything I knew, and I mean everything, into developing and teaching the course. Big or small, every course design and teaching decision I made was grounded in inclusive, student-centered, and evidence-based best practices.
The outcome? The course was a success. The students did really well, and several students reported that it was the best course they had ever taken. I know that this is not necessarily because I’m some amazing instructor, because I realize I still have a lot to learn, but what the success of the course taught me was that I was doing some things right.
After the course ended, I was asked a simple but thought-provoking question, leading me to ponder what exactly helped to make this course successful: “What were some of your learnings from the experience?” Reflecting on this, I have come away with three major learnings that I’m excited to share with you here.
Learning #1: Talk with people who are engaging in real-world applications of the course material
I wanted the course material to be grounded in relevant, real-world applications so that it would be interesting, relatable, and valuable to students, motivating them to engage and participate in their own learning. So, the first thing I did was conduct interviews with over 30 people who were working with cannabis in diverse ways, including research, breeding, cultivation, product production, and medicine.
For example, I talked with a researcher who was studying the genetics underlying photoperiod sensitivity in cannabis plants, a master grower of a cannabis company, a quality assurance manager at a cannabis cultivation facility, a leader of a company that creates cannabinoid-based pharmaceutical treatments, and a physician who specializes in cannabis medicine, among many others. During each interview, I asked the person to share with me what important concepts regarding cannabis they thought should be included in the course, and how these concepts have shown up in their own work with cannabis.
Talking with these professionals greatly improved the course in several ways:
- It helped me to expand my own understanding of cannabis in a very efficient and comprehensive way. I found that I could learn much more in a 30-minute conversation with a cannabis professional than I ever could by doing many hours of research on my own.
- It helped me to identify what content to include in the course, and gave me ideas for how I could present it within real-world contexts. As I listened to these cannabis professionals talk about their work and experiences with cannabis, I was able to pick out important underlying biological concepts and could then develop lessons that presented those concepts within the real-world situations they described.
- It connected me with experts who I could reach out to with questions and consult with when developing course materials. For example, many of these experts continued to support me after the initial interview by providing data and feedback that improved lessons, activities, and assignments, ensuring that they accurately reflected real-world situations.
- I was able to feature several of the experts in various lessons and assignments throughout the course, which exposed students to professionals and careers within the cannabis space and literally brought the course material to life.
The experiences, insights, and ideas that I gained from talking with these cannabis professionals allowed me to ground the course in relevant content and present it within real world contexts. This served to make the course more interesting, understandable, and valuable to students, which motivated them to engage and work hard, and resulted in greater learning gains.
Learning #2: Provide diverse learning experiences to include and engage all students
The course was intentionally designed to be interactive, with many different types of activities and assignments available to students both within and outside of class time.
For example, there was an in-class assignment point for each class period to give students credit for the activities they participated in during class (and to keep me accountable to making each class session interactive). To keep these in-class assignments from becoming stale, I deliberately used a different type of activity in each class session (e.g., video assignment, card sorting, jigsaw, case studies, presentations, question formulation, quiz questions, drawings, etc.), and included a mixture of individual, small group, and whole class components to the work.
There were also different types of assignments that students completed outside of class, such as discussion board assignments, expert interview assignments, class prep assignments, and knowledge check quizzes. Additionally, during the last three weeks of the course, students worked collaboratively in small groups on a final project where most of the work was completed in class using a series of scaffolded assignments.
Originally designed to offer a fair assessment strategy by allocating points across various low-stakes assignments to help diverse students succeed, I discovered that using a range of learning experiences also served an additional purpose. At the end of the course, I asked students to tell me what the most impactful experience for their learning had been, expecting that I might hear some common answers among students. However, I received a different answer from nearly every student! It turned out that they were all responding to something different. For example, some students reported that they especially enjoyed a certain lesson topic or activity, some particularly appreciated a specific expert interview or discussion board assignment, and others resonated with different aspects of the final project work.
This finding highlighted to me the importance of providing students with diverse learning experiences, as each student has their own unique interests, preferences, and abilities. Different students will respond to different things, so if you want to catch everyone, you need to cast a wide net with what you make available.
Learning #3: Put the focus on learning rather than grades
I firmly believe that a preoccupation with grades gets in the way of students’ learning, which is why I chose to use a labor-based grading scheme in which almost all assignments were graded for completion only. One might think that students would “slack off” with this type of grading, but what I found was the opposite. Students often went above and beyond what was asked of them, such as providing answers that were longer than required and completing additional components of an assignment despite knowing that it wouldn’t result in a higher score. I also found that students were much more invested in their own learning and actually absorbed more than they would have if their work had been graded for quality. Not only did I notice this pattern myself, but many students shared this experience with me throughout the course, unsolicited.
In addition to greater student investment and learning gains, there were several other benefits to using a labor-based grading scheme:
- Students had a clearer understanding of what was expected of them and felt more in control of their grade, which reduced their stress and anxiety and allowed them to focus on learning. This is opposed to my past experiences with evaluative grading, when I’ve had students complain that they were unsure of my expectations or unclear about what they were supposed to do to get the grade they wanted.
- Students were more open to sharing what they really thought, rather than simply focused on getting the “right” answer. This allowed me to get a more accurate view into their understanding of the course concepts and provided me with valuable feedback on how well I had set up the learning environment for them. If I noticed that students weren’t getting something I wanted them to get, I made a note to myself to make improvements for next time and tried to find a way to fit it into a subsequent lesson.
- It reduced competition among students and created a collaborative classroom environment in which students felt safe to ask questions, take risks, and share divergent ideas and perspectives without fear of judgement or penalty. This freedom gave students more agency in their own learning process and exposed us all to new insights and ways of thinking.
- It reduced the power differential between the students and me. I wasn’t the one giving them their grade – they were earning their grade by doing the work, and I was happy to give them credit for the work they completed. This greatly improved my rapport with students and made my relationship with them more supportive in nature, rather than adversarial or hierarchical.
- Grading was actually fun! Instead of reviewing their work with an eye toward evaluation and having to justify the grade I was giving them, I could relax and focus on reading and understanding their thoughts and ideas with an open mind and heart. I still provided students with feedback, but I didn’t feel the pressure of having to judge their work and then defend my assessment.
These results reinforced the benefits of labor-based grading for me – there is so much to gain when the focus is taken off of grades and put on to the learning process.
In conclusion
Bringing it all together, I now see that these three learnings ultimately resulted in the necessary conditions for what really made the course successful: everyone was able to contribute, which enhanced and expanded the learning experience for all.
This doesn’t just happen by itself. It requires that the course material is grounded in real-world applications so that students are interested in what they are learning and consider it valuable, motivating them to participate (Learning #1). It requires that students are given diverse opportunities to actively engage with the course material and contribute in ways that are authentic to who they are (Learning #2). And it requires a collaborative and respectful classroom environment in which students feel supported and safe to share their ideas and viewpoints without fear that they will be judged or punished (Learning #3). With these conditions in place, everyone was able to contribute, and the result was that we all learned more – me included!
It’s a beautiful thing when everyone contributes, because we all have something valuable to share, and the collective knowledge of the group is so much greater than that of any one individual, no matter who they are. When we are able to build and then tap into that collective knowledge, we all benefit, leading to greater, deeper, and more comprehensive learning for all.
In the spirit of collective learning, I’m curious about your thoughts and ideas. Do any of these learnings resonate with you? If so, how? For example, maybe you’ve experienced them yourself in your own context, or maybe they appeal to your own personal teaching philosophy. Do you have any uncertainties or questions about these learnings? What are some other learnings that you’ve experienced when developing or teaching a course that you might add to this list?
If you feel comfortable, please share your answers to these questions in the comments below or send me an email — I’d love to hear them! And if you’d like to know more about any aspect of the course, please reach out. You can contact me at christine.goedhart@botany.ubc.ca.