Learning

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Learning Science/Mathematics by Doing Science/Mat
hematics
Bill Sofer Dept. Genetics Waksman
Institute Rutgers
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Learning Modern Biological Science by Doing Moder
n Biological Science
Bill Sofer Dept. Genetics Waksman
Institute Rutgers
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Whats the best way to learn science?
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I dont know. But, like many of you I have drawn
on my own experience to come up with an answer
(guess).
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My own experience is that I hardly learned any
science in high school or college.
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I think that my idea of science at the time was
that it was a thicket of facts, and that the job
of the scientist was, by some mysterious process,
to come up with more facts.
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When I wasnt asleep, I was most interested in
those facts that were relevant to practical
matters like human health and technology.
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The words creativity, excitement, taste,
and beauty werent ever mentioned in the
science classroom.
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The most successful of my fellow classmates were
those who memorized the most, did the most
practice problems, and were the best at following
instructions in the lab.
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I was shocked when I got to graduate school (how
and why I went to graduate school is another long
story that is best left untold)
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I found people there who, while knowing a lot of
facts, were most excited about what wasnt
known. (to some, what was known was boring, and
they were clearly bored when they tried teaching
it)
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These people found things out by experiments.
I was surprised to find that one purpose of
experiments was to convince ones peers that what
they had found was correct.
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Often they made mistakes. Sometimes the most
pursuasive scientists were the least right, and
vice versa
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Science was being done by a community of people
trying to figure out how the world worked by
arguing with each other to find out who was right
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Therefore the contrast School -gt emphasis on
what is known bow to authority Science -gt
emphasis on what wasnt known fight with
authority
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So... Whats the best way to learn science?
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I dont know. But I suggest that we might do
better by having students engage in activities
that are closer to the way that science is
actually practiced rather than by doing the
things that they do now.
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How do you do that?
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Let me present an example of one way
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The Waksman Student Scholars Program has been
ongoing for 12 years.
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Heres how it works
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Students and their teachers come to the Waksman
Institute during the month of July. Two students
and one teacher per school.
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There they are presented with a research problem.
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They learn the fundamentals of the problem in the
summer, and during the academic year they recruit
additional students and work on the problem in
their schools.
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They come back to Rutgers six times during the
year to report on their progress.
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At the end of the year, in June, they publish
their results in the form of a poster
presentation.
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The current research problem involves a little
worm called C. remanei.
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It looks very much like the worm C. elegans, a
widely used model organism.
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The PROBLEM How closely are the two worms
related?
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One way to find that out is through their
DNAs. We cloned a collection of DNA pieces from
C. remanei and gave individual clones to
different schools
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The C. elegans genome had already been sequenced
(it was the first multicellular organism whose
sequence was known)
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At each school, teams of students carried out
some of the laboratory manipulations of molecular
biology
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Ultimately, the DNA from their clones were
sequenced (thanks to GE Healthcare) and the
students analyzed the results
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Their raw data looks like this
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(No Transcript)
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No one knew what would turn up.
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Students (and their teachers) had to deal with
questions like these
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How accurate is the sequence? How would you
increase its accuracy?
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Is the same or similar sequence found in the
genome of C. remanei? What tools are available
to do these similarity searches? How do they
work?
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How do you measure similarity? If you find a
similarity, what is the best alignment between
the two sequences? Is there a best
alignment? How do you find it?
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If they find a similar sequence, what are the
odds of finding that match (similarity) by
chance? What does it depend on?
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Does the sequence code for a protein? How do
you know? How could you find out?
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Can you do an alignment of the protein
sequences? Whats the advantage (disadvantage)
of doing an alignment of strings with 20
different characters as opposed to one with four
characters?
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How many sequences would you have to compare
before you were confident that you were getting a
good estimate of the similarity between the two
organisms?
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Why might two sequences (A in remanei and A in
elegans B in remanei and B in elegans) show
different amounts of similarity?
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One could go on and on...
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Some students were able to actually publish their
sequences. That is they submitted their sequences
to Genbank and had them accepted. They got their
names in the literature.
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Does this work educationally? Do students learn
more? Do all students profit from this
experience?
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I dont know.
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What I do know is that theyre getting a taste of
science that is much closer to the real thing.
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Were trying to develop a nationwide program to
implement this program HiGene The High School
Genome Sequencing Project
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Waksman Student Scholars Program Drew
Vershon Marty Nemeroff Susan Coletta Jeff Charney
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Waksman Student Scholars Program Supported by
NIH (SEPA) NSF (ITEST) Howard Hughes GE
Healthcare