• The "BIGs" Program
• Cases
• Cooperative Learning
• Building Community
• Assessment
• Resources

BIGs Insights > Building Community

Building Community

Aside from its loftier goals, the BIGs program aims to make learning science a fun, positive experience for freshmen students. While there are other, different activities embedded into the cases, the types of activities we refer to here are those that will help foster a sense of community for the students. By implementing several extracurricular activities during the BIGs course, we hope to get students on the “other side of the classroom."

One of the ways to foster this sense of community is through informal gatherings, among students and between students and faculty. Students, freshmen students in particular, only see their professors in large lecture hall situations and rarely get the opportunity to interact directly with them. Consequently, they view their professors as untouchable figures of authority and all knowledge, and not as someone with whom one can forge a dynamic working/mentoring relationship. The BIGs program allows for direct contact between faculty and students on a regular basis, and helps to break down some of the barriers that might impede learning. Participating in informal gatherings helps to break down these barriers even further. It allows students to view their professors as humans with everyday lives, and foster a much more collegial atmosphere both within and outside the classroom. Faculty and Teaching Assistants have commented that parties have been a very fun way to build community. In the first year BIGs was offered, the students from Jon and Tony’s courses organized a party where all the students and faculty got together. The students were amazed to see the faculty (from Biology, math and chemistry) just talking together and having a good time. It did not occur to them that faculty from across campus might interact on that level. It makes the faculty appear more approachable and demonstrates that the faculty is very concerned about the educational experiences of its students.

The students have reported that community is one of the most important factors of their BIGs experience. Students from the 2002 and 2003 BIGs reported that they stayed in contact with the members of their cohort. The students felt so good about the experience that they wanted to replicate it, and try to register for classes together in the semester following BIGs. One of the chemistry TAs commented during a focus group that one group of BIGs students continued to get together for social outings, even several months after the end of BIGs.

Another way to build community (science community) is to take advantage of the science-related resources and activities at UW-Madison and integrate some of these into the BIGs course to engage students in the science on-campus and the scientific process. Incorporating activities that allow students to explore how science is done in real time, how scientists think and approach problems, and generally give students a view of the everyday life of a scientist, will help students become part of the science community at large. Some activities one might consider are:

• Field trips on and off campus
• Trip to lab to observe science in action, meet lab personnel
• Involve students in a research project and have them collect data for a semester
• Meet variety of scientists, physicians
• Visit the hospital, realize the link between research and medicine
• Report on science on campus

In many of the BIGs courses, instructors have incorporated at least one of the activities listed above. Involving students in a research project is an ideal way to introduce them to the ways of science. In the BIGs offered by Tony Ives, 2002, the students conducted a short-term research project to determine the effects of human intake of Vitamin B complex on the students’ attractiveness to mosquitoes. The students took a vitamin supplement every day, (either vitamin B complex, or vitamin C) for 8 weeks. There was also a control group consisting of students that took no vitamins. Once every 2 weeks they assayed their attractiveness to mosquitoes. This involved rolling a plexiglass rod between their hands for 3 minutes, placing it in a cage with 30-50 mosquitoes (Anopheles stevensi) and counting the number of mosquitoes landing on the rod in a 2-minute period. Data was collected, analyzed and plotted by the students toward the end of the semester. Therefore, the students had the opportunity to see the outcome of the experiment, even though the results were preliminary. The preliminary findings suggested that, keeping in mind that their experimental design did not account for all variables, vitamin B does not decrease attractiveness to mosquitoes.

In another BIGs offered in 2004, Beth Meyerand incorporated a number of interesting activities to get the students out of the classroom. The BIGs taught by Beth focused on medical imaging of disease and thus attracted mostly pre-med type students. As such, many of the activities related to medical practice and were of great interest to her students. On a number of occasions, the students had the opportunity to visit the UW Hospital, and observe some of the facilities, such as Radiology, for example. They were able to chat with radiologists, gain some understanding of the equipment used in medical imaging, and ask the physicians general questions about practice. Beth also showed her students videos related to work in this field.

In a couple of the BIGs, students generated their own cases. Recall from the section on ‘Cases’ that one of these student generated cases challenged the group to seek out and report on interesting research on campus. This might represent an interesting activity that could have the dual function of being one of the cases, but also getting students out of the classroom and learning about campus and the science being conducted on campus. In groups, the students could visit different labs, interview the personnel and the PI, and present a report describing the research and it impact.