Weekly App Practical #4: Students as Researchers

One of the subjects I teach is Anatomy & Physiology. It is my favorite class to teach for so many reasons. It is an elective science class, so every student made a choice to be there. The class is for juniors and seniors, so most of my students are planning out their future and considering colleges and careers, many falling within the field of health sciences. This contributes hugely to the level of engagement in class. In my experience, engaged students are also inquisitive students. Every year, I provide the disclaimer to my students that while I am an Anatomy & Physiology teacher, I am not a doctor. Therefore, there will likely be many questions that I am unable to answer. This is where having student researchers plays a vital role in my classroom.

In my classroom, I have a "Parking Lot". It is simply a large piece of paper on the back wall, divided into my different class periods. If a student asks a question that either a) I do not know the answer to or b) requires a lengthy response that does not exactly fit into the lesson at the moment, I ask them to grab a post-it note to write their question and "park it in the parking lot". Once the parking lot fills up, we have a research day where students pick a post-it from the parking lot and get to work. Together we make a shared Google Slides presentation on the questions they researched and everyone informally presents their research. A "typical" slide can be seen below:

I have enjoyed this system a lot, but sometimes I think about how it could be improved. For example, I really want students to use multiple sources and ensure they are valid, but I'm not sure they do. In considering ways to improve the research assignments in my class, I came across Diigo!

Researching while using multiple sources can be difficult and sometimes overwhelming. The internet has a whole lot of information (maybe too much) and keeping everything straight can seem impossible. But Diigo is a perfect way to keep everything organized.

Students can create a free Diigo account and then download the Chrome extension. Once they have it, they can create tags that correspond to what they are researching. For example, if a student wanted to look into what causes an oblique fracture, they could make a tag that corresponds to "Bone Fractures". Next, they can visit websites and track the important information. Diigo allows students to not only bookmark a website, but also highlight the information from that website that they want to go back to and even add a note. 

I can see this being extremely useful as I often bookmark things and then completely forget what its purpose was supposed to be.

Another helpful feature is the ability to share with classmates. Students can not only share the websites they were using, but also specify the exact portion they are using with a note explaining why. At the end of the year in my Anatomy class, students choose a topic that wasn't covered during the year and work with a group to create a lesson for the rest of the class on this topic. It is one of the more difficult projects I assign as it requires a great deal of investigation on a typically broad topic. Within the 48 minutes of class, they can only get so much done. The next day is often started by trying to remember where they left off. With Diigo, this issue can be largely resolved and collaboration can be easily improved. I am looking forward to introducing Diigo to my students before our next research project!