Monitoring how changes in pedagogical practices have improved student interest and performance for an introductory biochemistry course

This study describes feedback on the effects of changes introduced in our teaching practices for an introductory biochemistry course in the Life Sciences curriculum. Students on this course have diverse educational qualifications and are taught in large learning groups, creating challenges for the management of individual learning. We used the constructive alignment principle, refining the learning contract and re‐drafting the teaching program to introduce active learning and an organization of activities that promotes the participation of all the students and helps their understanding. We also created teaching resources available through the university virtual work environment. Our research aimed to measure the effects of those changes on the students’ success. Monitoring of the student performance showed a continuous increase in the percentage of students who passed the course, from 2.13% to 33.5% in 4 years. Analysis of student perceptions highlighted that the teaching methodology was greatly appreciated by the students, whose attendance also improved. The recent introduction of clickers‐questions constituted a complementary leverage. The active involvement of the students and better results for summative assessments are altogether a strong motivation for teaching staff to continue to make improvements.


Foreword
Biochemistry can be defined as the science of the chemical bases of life. Since the cell is the structural unit of living systems, biochemistry can also be defined as the science that studies the chemical constituents of living cells and the reactions and transformations they undergo. The TU BBM1 is designed to enable students to discover the composition of the macromolecules constituting the cells, their structures and the structure of the simpler links that constitute them and their main physical and chemical properties.

Prerequisites
The knowledge acquired in high school via the general bac

Organisation
This teaching requires about 120 hours of work, including attendance at classes and tutorials and especially your personal work.
The learning will be done through: • Lectures: 22 sessions from 1h to 1h15 (2 sessions per week from week 1): 1 introduction, 7 on proteins and enzymes, 3 on lipids, 8 on carbohydrates and 3 on nucleic acids • Tutorials: 1 session of 1h and 10 sessions of 1h30 (1 session per week starting from week 2): 3 on proteins, 1 on enzymes, 1½ on lipids, 4 on carbohydrates and 1½ on nucleic acids • Personal work (study in textbooks, resolution of exercises before tutorials, active participation in questions during class and tutorials, etc.) • Discussions with other students • The use of moodle BBM1's educational resources (answers to tutorials, revisions...) Rules during sessions:  When you enter the classroom, you agree to respect your colleagues and teachers, to be courteous, not to eat during the class, to be silent during presentations, not to talk to each other for no reason.  You will be asked to participate in the various activities proposed by the teachers, for example reading documents before the class, answering questions before or during the class, discussing with your close neighbours to refine your arguments etc.  You can ask questions related to the course! You can either raise your hand to ask your question (strongly desired) or write it on a small paper and drop it at the end of the course or send it by email to bioch@univ-artois.fr. In the last two cases the answers will be given at the beginning of the next class. They will all be listed, with the answers, on moodle's BBM1 space. [3]

Learning targets and content elements
The learning targets and content elements are presented by chapter:

I. General introduction :
At the end of this course you should be able to: (a) Explain the purpose of biochemistry (b) Measure how sequencing of the human genome has given rise to many disciplines (c) Describe the properties of water and its importance for the structuring of biological macromolecules (d) Explain the relationship of pH with acidity and alkalinity and what characterizes weak acids and bases Course contents:

Definition
Objectives of biochemistry Impact of sequencing the human genome Relationship between biochemistry and medicine Water structure Importance of water Recall of the concept of pH Dissociation of weak acids and bases

II. Proteins-Enzymes :
At the end of this course you should be able to: (a) Explain the presence of 20 amino acids as structural units of peptides and proteins.
(b) Define the structure of an -amino acid and its different forms in solution in water (the structure of the 20 amino acids is required).  Tutorial Proteins 1: deals with the use of molecular models to familiarize with Fischer projection, with the formulas of some amino acids Tutorial Proteins 2: deals with peptide diversity, the general formula of amino acids, the calculation of their molar mass, the notion of absorbance and the Beer-Lambert law Tutorial Proteins 3: focuses on the ionization of amino acids and the contribution of side chains to protein ionization, the relationship between the overall charge of a protein and their isoelectric point, and the interactions of haemoglobin with O2. , CO and CO2. Tutorial Enzymes: focuses on enzymes, the interest of working in initial velocity, an example of enzymatic kinetics as well as the graphical exploitation of the Michaelis-Menten equation.

III. Lipids :
At the end of this course you should be able to:  Tutorial Nucleic acids 1-2: (one-and-a-half session) relates to the main bases, their keto and enol forms, the constitution of the nucleosides and nucleotides, the molar composition of the DNA in bases, the relation between number of base pairs and molecular mass, the action of some restriction enzymes, the main properties of DNA