“Challenge” is the operative word here.

VaNTH researchers have developed “challenge-based” educational techniques that are helping students understand the complexities of the material they must master by organizing the material around challenging problems they must tackle.

For example, here’s one challenge Vanderbilt Professor Robert Roselli uses in his undergraduate biotransport course: As a biomedical engineer, you are called to testify as an expert witness on behalf of the defendant, who is accused of murder. The body of her boyfriend was found at 5:30 a.m. in a creek behind her house. The prosecutor’s expert witness places the time of death at about midnight. The defendant has witnesses that account for her whereabouts before 11:00 p.m. and after 2:00 a.m., but she cannot provide an alibi for the period between 11:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. How did the prosecutor's expert witness arrive at the time of death? What information will you need to challenge that assessment?

“Students found this module to be fun and interesting because they could relate it to popular TV shows based on crime-scene investigations,” Roselli says. To get an accurate idea of the time of death, students learn about a variety of techniques, such as heat-transfer coefficients in air as well as water, and asymmetry of heat loss throughout the body. As they continue to research the problem and gain deeper understanding of the issues, their assessments change.

“The take-home message of this module is that models are only as accurate as the information provided and the validity of the assumptions made in their construction,” Roselli says. “That is a tremendously valuable lesson for these students to learn as future bioengineers.”

Classroom testing

The challenge-based techniques pioneered by VaNTH are proving even more successful than researchers had initially hoped. VaNTH testbed classrooms all over the country have turned in results that demonstrate that the challenge-based modules developed by VaNTH are more effective than ordinary classroom lectures.

What’s more, the techniques are helping produce what VaNTH calls “adaptive experts.”

“The issue is innovation and how to teach it,” Harris says. “An adaptive expert can solve problems never seen before, whereas a routine expert fits a new problem into an existing pattern.

“We used to spend a lot of time focusing on teaching efficiency and then make the adaptive leap in the senior year with a capstone design course that puts things together in an innovative way. Now we’re building innovation and efficiency as we go along,” he says.

Harris says that the heart of the technique is that students are more highly motivated to acquire basic knowledge and skills because they are motivated by thinking aboiut the challenge first. This motivation allows them to take ownership in both the solution and the process.

STAR Legacy Cycle

The process is outlined in what VaNTH calls the STAR Legacy Cycle. After being presented with the challenge, students brainstorm and share ideas about what they know and what they think they must learn about the problem. Then they do their own research and study to find out which of their ideas have merit, which leads to other proposed solutions.
Professors can guide and give feedback, and with the help of VaNTH-developed assessment materials, can monitor student progress and determine what additional assistance might be needed. Even standard lectures become more effective in this context because the challenge has created a “time for telling”.

Challenge-based techniques are based on learning science research, as outlined in the seminal work, /How People Learn. / This book, published by the National Research Council and edited by former Vanderbilt Centennial Professor of Psychology and Education John Bransford and associates, outlines radically different educational techniques from the traditional lecture format.

In addition to organizing and presenting the material differently, the modules incorporate use of web-based interactive programs that supplement classroom experience with computer-based exercises and materials.

Dozens of modules and collections of these modules known as “mosaics” have been developed by VaNTH researchers and are being put to use in college, high school and middle school classrooms. Professors and teachers can use the modules and can also develop new ones, using authoring software developed by VaNTH.

The authoring software and assessment software VaNTH developed are some of the tools educators need to incorporate challenge-based techniques in their classrooms. The authoring software gives professors and teachers a framework and an environment in which to develop material using challenge-based techniques. The software was designed to give professors numerous resources to create modules that are vibrant, interactive and engaging.

Educators can also use VaNTH’s assessment systems to help determine how much of the material their students are absorbing, and where additional intervention might be needed.