Concordia Neurochemistry: The Values of Student Led Education

Neurochemistry proved to be everything I have hoped I would experience throughout my educational experience at Concordia.  I believe that its function as a capstone course required that we students take it upon ourselves to learn the material and engage in discussion about relatively complex topics both for our educational gain and the education of our fellow neurochemistry classmates.  From a pedagogical standpoint I applaud the design of the course.  For the first time, we students have been given the vested responsibility to learn ourselves and help teach one another about topic covered in class as well as engage each other in discussion about the social, biological, and ethical implications of some the topics covered throughout the semester.  I guess I was pleasantly surprised to see the entire class step up to the plate and authentically care about the hand they had in progressing the class forward.
In addition to the discussion based aspects of the class I found that the exam formats were very effective in allowing the students to express what they had learned through both class based discussion and general problem-solving skills.  The format of the exams we took were of two parts, an in-class portion where the students were given a limited amount of information about a neurochemical problem and other factual information in addition to that problem, and secondly a take home portion of the exam in which the article the exam is based off of is given to the students and the students compose information regarding the cause of the problem as well as evaluate the accuracy of their in-class portion.  I found this to be an open-ended yet extremely effective method for students to apply the problem solving skills gained throughout the semester
Finally, the blog posts have been among the most rewarding experiences throughout the summer because it gives us students the opportunity to communicate science to the general public.  This scientific communication also happens to be the writing formats, which we would most like to read regarding neurochemistry and the social ramifications of particular problems in its realm.  I have been extremely fortunate to participate in this course at Concordia College and I will surely not forget the educational benefits of discussion based science courses in the future.