40 BIOCHEMICAL EDUCATION Summer 1973 Vol. 1 No. 3

BIOCHEMISTRY AT THE

OPEN UNIVERSITY

The Open University is a unique inst i tut ion, and to appreciate both the challenge and problems of teaching O U biochemistry, it is necessary to begin with the system itself. The University exists to provide the possibility o f a University educat ion to adults s tudying part-time, at a distance. It is open to all wi thout prior educational qualifications, and Its teaching me thods and materials include writ ten correspondence texts, open circuit radio and television transmission, home exper imental kits plus miscellaneous audio-visual aids, all backed up by a network of nearly 300 s tudy centres scattered across the count ry , the labours of an army of part-t ime tutors and counsellors, and an intensive week of full-time summer school for all science s tudents in a conventional university envi ronment each year. This year, 1973, the University is the largest in Britain, with upwards o f 35,000 s tudents taking courses, and only financial restrict ions (the O.U. is f inanced in parallel with conventional British universities, through the Depar tment of Educat ion and Science) prevent it expanding further.

Our whole concept o f teaching is largely de termined by this framework. Thus we have to cater for s tudents f rom very widely different social and educational backgrounds, some of whom may not have studied for many years and even then have done no science. They may be of any age from 21 into their seventies and scattered the length and breadth o f the British Isles. By definition, they have to be independent learners, and highly motivated. In practice, in the first 3 years of our funct ioning, we have had a heavy intake of school teachers, particularly into arts and social science subjects, technicians, particularly into science subjects, and an increasing number o f housewives. People with manual working class jobs are relatively few - though still several-fold higher than at conventional British universities, and the proport ion has increased each year since we accepted our first s tudents to begin courses in 1971.

The University teaching is based on the course credit system; a s tudent mus t accumulate 8 credits for an honours degree, 6 for a general degree, taken as slowly as he likes, bu t no faster than 2 a year. For the average science student, a credit involves 12 hours work a week, 34 weeks o f a year, plus revision weeks, tutorials and summer school, examined by a mixture o f con t inuous assessment and final examinat ion. The s tudent ' s 12 hours is made up approximately of half an hour each o f TV and radio, an hour on exper imental work, up to an hour on assignment material, and the rest of the t ime following the correspondence text and associated set reading.

The teaching is Faculty-based and it wasear ly decided that , both for positive educational reasons and in order to provide a reliable base for higher level teaching, each Faculty would offer a single-credit Founda t ion course as the entry point for students. Unless they have credit exemptions , every s tudent mus t take 2 Foundat ion courses, which means choosing courses from 2 different Faculties, though the commones t combinat ions arc social science/arts and science/ technology or sc ,ence/maths. Although m u c h of the choice of higher level courses is unrestr icted allowing s tudents to pick and choose amongs t faculties and topics, the ' typical ' science s tudent is relatively vocationally oriented, and the course s tructure is designed both to allow enormous breadth of choice, by comparison with which an Oxford PPE degree (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) seems narrowly confining, and the possibility of a certain degree of in-depth specialisation.

Each science s tuden t then, (and there are between 4 and 5,000 new science s tudents beginning their courses each January,

STEVEN P.R. ROSE Professor of Biology, The Open University, Walton, Bletchley, Bucks. England.

when our year begins) takes an integrated Science Foundat ion course. Intellectually this was a great challenge to us to produce, both because we could assume no prtor knowledge or mathemat ical ability, and because o f the fascination o f producing a truly integrated account of contemporary science, that was also at all deep in con ten t - we are teaching science, not about science. But in addition, we were determined to avoid, in any of our courses, teaching science in a social vacuum, as an isolated set o f theories and data which do not derive and reflect back into the society in which they are developed. Science we believe, is not wi thout its ideological resonances, and these mus t also be under- stood by our students. In general, we have used radio to teach in this area, jus t as we have used television to provide the laboratory situation.

In the Founda t ion course, which begins with the social origins of science, proceeds through concepts of mass, force and t ime and atomic physics into chemistry and then to macromolecules, the s tudent ' s in t roduct ion to biology comes through 4 weeks work in biochemistry; the s tructure and func t ion o f cells, which he studies with the McArthur microscope provided in his kit, enzymes and metabolism, where he follows simple enzyme kinetics, using salivary amylase and a colorimeter, regulation and control of cell processes, and finally the genetic code and protein synthesis, before moving from the cellular to the organismic level and thence into populat ion biology, ecology and evolution. The earth science part o f the course then follows.

Around 6 5 - 7 0 % of the s tudents complete the science Founda t ion course and pass the final examinat ion, the vast majority of the drop-out occurring in the first 3., m o n t h s before final registration occurs. By contrast, once into the year the drop- out and failure rate, at least last year (the first run o f the second level courses), was only about half of thls. 'Drop-out ' does not necessarily mean the s tuden t has abandoned his studies, merely that particular course, and may well try again the following year. Even on the gloomiest assumptions , the cost/effectiveness claim can be made that the OU is severalfold cheaper per graduate than a conventional university. I do not propose to discuss the significance of such calculations here!

A word should be said at this point abou t our teaching methods. Not only do our courses and their educat ional objectives - spelled out, for the s tudent , in behavioural terms - have to be minute ly planned and any item included rigorously justif ied (not just 'because I was taught it as an undergraduate ' or even 'because I research it' or 'because it is interesting' , - we have to learn to argue better than that) . In addition, in producing new material, we have adopted a collective work style. The course texts are produced by a team, consisting of academics, educational technologists, BBC producers for the TV and radio, editors, and so on. Each unit (week's work) is prepared by an individual author (somet imes an external consultant) , bu t it goes through an iterative procedure of drafting and collective criticism and the eventual product is that of the team as a whole I • This can produce problems - it was qui te an experience to share membersh ip of the Science Founda t ion Course Team with a chemical thermo- dynamicis t with distinctly abrasive views on ATP and energy- rich bonds! - bu t on the whole it works astonishingly well, as most who have seen the finished material will agree. The contrast between collective teaching of this sort and the experience o f most conventional universities with which I am acquainted is very marked.

BIOCHEMICAL EDUCATION Summer 1973 Vol. 1 No. 3 41

The student coming through the Science Foundation course is presented with a range of second level biology courses, adding up to just under 11/2 credits. Most will probably take all the options; Biological Bases of Behaviour, Comparative Physiology, Genes and Development, Environment, and Biochemistry, combining them with organic chemistry, geology and possibly some of the maths, physics or history of science courses. At third level, we are currently preparing a set of 1/2 credit courses, to be available from 1974 and 1976/7 respectively, in Ecology, the Physiology of Cells and Organisms, Evolutionary Biology and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. In the dimmer future, if our teaching staff expands, there is the possibility also of further specialist and post-experience courses (microbiology, parasitology e t c . . . ) and even more distantly, paramedical courses. But as currently planned, it will be possible for a student to take an honours (8 credit) degree in which more than 50% of his post- foundation course work is in biology - including a healthy chunk of biochemistry, perhaps about 360 student study hours in all in steady state; we should produce 2-400 such graduates a year (again, I shall not discuss the significance of the figure here).

What of the 6-unit biochemistry course that some 600 second level students a year are taking? In concept, it is fairly traditional, concentrating on, as its three main themes, structure/function relationships, regulation and control, and energy metabolism. The six unit texts deal with biological macromolecules, enzymes, cell energetics, metabolic pathways and - the last two units - regulation of cell processes. They are linked to Loewy and Siekevitz' Cell Structure and Function as set book. For his home experiment, which is linked to a written essay - type assignment, the student is provided with a colorimeter, dried yeast, an assort- ment of glassware, dialysis tubing, ammonium sulphate, buffer tablets and reagents to perform biuret and yeast invertase assays. His brief is to extract the invertase, determine its specific activity and attempt a purification (few students get very far with this last, though it is possible; the limitations of the home environment make it difficult, and we really haven't solved the centrifuge problem. Filtration is very slow . . . . . . ) At summer school the students are also introduced to the oxygen electrode for mitochondria and chloroplasts; most will also do some radio- active work and assays. In addition, because biochemistry is so heavily dependent on techniques, we have used all six TV programmes in a studio laboratory taking the student through a series of standard techniques, enzyme purification (linked to the home experiment); criteria for purity; gel fractionation and chromatography; the handling of isotopes and micro-organisms. In addition, from Foundation level, he is already familiar with subcellular fractionation and Warburg methods . . . . . It must be emphasised that the last tl~ing we would use our TV time for is lectures! the student may take readings off the screen or partici- pate in the experiment, but hopefully is rarely passive; the TV is supplemented by a special booklet.

But the bulk of the students work time is invested in the main text of the unit. He is guided through it by a list of educational objectives, and indications of what can be omitted if he is running short of time. At various points in the text he may be directed out to his set book, at other points the text is broken by means of self-assessment questions and structured exercises. At the end of the unit, he will complete an assignment which will be computer marked (CMA). Many biochemists coming into the CMA business seem to believe that it is all a matter of testing low level true/ false-type knowledge, or a few multiple choice questions. Much more can be done than this, though there are limits, which is why we also have the tutor marked assignment (TMA) and a final

examination which includes essay type questions. One procedure we have used extensively, which also serves as an alternative for some aspects of the laboratory experience, is the structured exercise. In this, the student is presented sequentially with a set of experimental observation followed by a set of possible hypotheses/explanations. He selects the most likely, and proceeds to the next set of observations and so on. In one such exercise the student constructs a probable sequence for glycolysis in muscle, in another, interprets observations on LDH isoenzymes. The student learns to distinguish between valid and invalid extra- polations from data, biochemical 'hunches' and so on.

We are often asked about how much lab experience our students have. If we are to look rationally at the objectives of much laboratory practice for biochemical students, we must confess to much of it being either part of tradition, or a belief that 'no student of mine will pass unless he knows how to operate the Analogie and Glockenspiel low density isofocussing centrifugal chromatogram'. We believe it is possible to define objectives which are less equipment-bound - though there will always be value-judgements involved. When one does so, one finds that there are different ways of approaching the several objectives, and by separating them out, constrained as we are by our limited laboratory facilities, we can, and hopefully do, use this constraint positively to design better ways of meeting them.

I do not want to give the impression we have solved all the problems - far from it; and we must always be conscious, in the innovating that has been our continuous lot in life since we started making courses in 1969, that there is a chance of ossifying into an insensitive, Napoleonic and positivistic teaching machine. Only continuous criticism can help us avoid this. All our material is openly accessible 2 and we welcome comment.

A recurrent question from students is 'how will my degree compare?' It is appropriate to close this article with my reply. I don't think that an OU honours graduate in bio!ogy will be able - even if he wants - to go straight into a research lab and start work for a Ph.D without a period of full-time in house training, an M.Sc. or equivalent. But this is a quite inappropriate job expectation for virtually all graduates of conventional universities, although it is assiduously fostered by traditional teaching methods, whose aim often appears, at one level of consciousness at least, ' to be to persuade the prospective 2.1 or 1st to register for a Ph.D with me and not with Jones in the corner lab.' In terms of knowing what science is, and what it is about, its social relevance and social problems - I think the OU science degree will turn out to be among the best in Britain. Nothing less would satisfy either us or our students.

NOTES

1 The Second level biochemistry Course Team consists of:

Chairman and general editor - Steven Rose Course Unit authors: Norman Cohen, Jeff Haywood and Brian Tiplady. Other members - Eve Braley Smith (Editor), Stephen'Hurry, Robin Harding (Course Assistant), Bob CordeU and Vic Finlayson (Staff Tutors), Roger Jones and Jim Stevenson (BBC). The views expressed in this paper are my own and not necessarily those of the course team.

2 Details of how to obtain Open University material, course texts, films and videotapes, can be obtained by writing to the Marketing Division, Open University, Walton, Bletchley, Bucks.