This talk "Web authoring as a pedagogic tool: an example from the biosciences" by Chris Willmott and Jane Wellens was given at the Pushing the Boundaries event in January 2006. The slides describe an activity in which second year undergraduates were asked to produce websites about various bioethical issues. This activity was also described in a paper Willmott CJR and Wellens J (2004) Teaching about bioethics through authoring of websites Journal of biological Education 39:27-31. More recently we have actually replaced this task with an activity in which students produce videos on bioethical topics (see other slideshare presentations or a chronological list at http://lefthandedbiochemist.wordpress.com/talks/). These slides have recently been added here for completion - the site where they were previously available having gone off-line.

1. Pushing the Boundaries 2006 Dr Chris Willmott* and Dr Jane Wellens † Web authoring as a pedagogic tool an example from the biosciences * Dept of Biochemistry, and † Staff Development Unit University of Leicester [email_address] University of Leicester

14. Feedback on training “ I have never tried anything like this before and I could actually do it, which I didn’t expect!” “ I’d always thought that designing a web page would be a very difficult thing, but the step-by-step instructions made the hole (sic) thing very painless and easy to understand. The lecture last week was a great introduction to web-design, so that coming to this practical. I had some idea what I was doing. Thanks very much A*” “ This was a very useful exercise because I had no idea before where to start if I wanted to design a web page, but it is something that I wanted to be able to do.” University of Leicester

15. Evaluation by participants Questionnaire-based survey before and after activity in 2002 and 2003 (n = 69, score out of 10) Ability to produce a website (after) = 7.1 out of 10 Only 11 out of 72 had any prior experience + 0.38 6.51 6.13 Interest in Web authoring + 1.04 6.84 5.80 Interest in Bioethics + 4.08 6.61 2.53 Knowledge about Bioethics Change After Before Category

16. Bioethics issues listed by students * % of cohort citing topic (only topics mentioned by > 50% on at least one occasion are included) 73.7 2.7 44.1 5.7 Use of human tissue/organs 73.7 37.8 85.3 48.6 Animal expts/testing 29.0 89.2 50.0 77.1 Cloning 68.4 0 35.3 0 Gene patenting 61.8 67.7 44.1 2002 After 55.3 5.4 5.7 Gene therapy 29.0 2.7 14.3 Genetic screening 92.1 10.8 25.7* Xenotransplantation 2003 After 2003 Before 2002 Before Topic

17. Topics identified in first place Xenotransplantation (13) Use of stem cells (5) Gene therapy (4) Gene patenting (3) 2003 (after) Cloning (19) Animal experiments (5) Euthanasia (3) 2003 (before) Gene therapy (7) Animal experiments (5) Xenotransplantation (4) Genetic screening (5) Gene patenting (3) 2002 (after) Cloning (16) Animal experiments (4) Gen engin./modfictn (3) Xenotransplantation (3) 2002 (before)

18. Bioethics issues listed by students * % of cohort citing topic (only topics mentioned by > 50% on at least one occasion are included) 73.7 2.7 44.1 5.7 Use of human tissue/organs 73.7 37.8 85.3 48.6 Animal expts/testing 29.0 89.2 50.0 77.1 Cloning 68.4 0 35.3 0 Gene patenting 61.8 67.7 44.1 2002 After 55.3 5.4 5.7 Gene therapy 29.0 2.7 14.3 Genetic screening 92.1 10.8 25.7* Xenotransplantation 2003 After 2003 Before 2002 Before Topic

19. Influential news? University of Leicester

20. Influential news? University of Leicester

24. References Conway R., Kember D., Sivah A. and Wu M. (1993) Peer assessment of an individual’s contribution to group project Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 18 :45-56 QAA (2002) The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education Benchmarking academic standards: Bioscience http://www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/honours/biosciences.pdf (accessed 5 Jan 2006) Willmott C.J.R. and Wellens J. (2004) Teaching about bioethics through authoring of websites Journal of Biological Education 39 :27-31 University of Leicester