Organ Donation and Transplantation| Organ Donation and Transplantation |
| | Introduction | Task | Process | Rubric | References | For Teachers | Conclusion | | |
Teacher's Page Two of the six Learning requirements for the South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE) Stage 1 subject outline for Biology require a student to demonstrate, through their learning, that they can “select and critically evaluate biological evidence from different sources and present informed conclusions and personal views on social, ethical and environmental issues” (Government of South Australia, 2010, p. 8) and also that they can "present alternative explanations for a range of problems" (p. 8). This WebQuest is designed to meet these requirements and provides students with a challenging issue to investigate to further develop their growing knowledge of Physiology, which is one of the three required areas of study in Biology. The subject outline highlights that there are “many ethical issues [which] involve knowledge of physiology” (Government of South Australia, 2010, p. 15) and propose that one way this may be covered is by investigating issues related to organ donation. In a one semester course, the SACE Board require the Biology course’s assessments to comprise of four or five tasks from Assessment Type 1 tasks—Investigations Folios—and Assessment Type 2 tasks—Skills and Applications Tasks—each worth 20% of the final grade. At least one of these must be a collaborative task, and one of these tasks also must be an Issue Investigation in which students "learn to think critically and reflectively when relating their evidence to the issue under investigation [and they are able to] describe the different views people hold on an issue based on their evidence” (p. 9). Further requirements for an issue investigation are that it can be either an individual or collaborative presentation and if oral, to a maximum of 5 minutes. This Investigation type also must allow students to provide evidence for their learning in the assessment design criteria of “investigation; analysis and evaluation; application; and knowledge and understanding” (p. 9). The Organ Donation and Transplantation WebQuest comprehensively meets these requirements as it asks students to select and acknowledge appropriate sources of information; to analyse and evaluate that information and form an opinion from the perspective of the role they choose, which may require them to propose a view at odds to their previously held beliefs. Students are required to present a solution to the problem of scarcity of organs for donation and in doing so are able to see how their acquired knowledge could produce a solution to a real life application. Finally students are able to appreciate that their growing knowledge of Physiology allows them to have a greater understanding of the social and ethical issues members of their society grapple with. This WebQuest is designed for senior secondary students who have as one of their personal goals, the desire to obtain University entry, hence the reading challenges of some of the articles may be inappropriate for other contexts. There are however, always differences in abilities of students and the roles have been created to allow each member of the group to work at a task which best suits their level of readiness to learn. For example a student who has more experience in activities involving higher order thinking may choose to investigate ethical issues, whilst a more pragmatic learner may elect to investigate the issues from a medical/physiological perspective. If the school has a Learning Management System (LMS), or is able to access any of the free Wiki sites available on the web, students would be able to make use of this Web 2.0 technology to collate their research information (as is demonstrated in this WebQuest). By using a Wiki, which is available only to the teacher and members of the specific group, all members of the group are able to keep abreast of others' research and may find complementary ideas which could encourage further exploration from a slightly different perspective. However, if the school is unable to access this technology it would be possible to use a Word document to store information as well as the URL, and although students would work in isolation, they would be able to print out the document to make it available for group discussion. Work from this subject may be required for external moderation purposes, and the issue of how to provide evidence of the students' oral presentation is a difficult one. Videoing the presentation is possible, but problematic, as each student would require their own DVD. Another approach could be to ask the class members to complete a brief peer assessment sheet at the end of each presentation which rates the student's presentation skills, to provide evidence for moderation, that the oral did occur. One of the greatest challenges for the students (and teachers) in this WebQuest is to maintain the focus of the investigation from the perspective of the role they have chosen to adopt. The potential for students to disclose personal views and hence find themselves out of step with a majority viewpoint is a great risk if they are not consciously working from the viewpoint of their chosen role. Teachers must be consciously aware of this risk and help direct students away from considering this task as a place for personal disclosure. |
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