Associate Professor Garry Scroop
Associate Professor Garry Scroop, co-founder and management committee member of The MAWA Trust, was invited to speak at the 6th World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences which was held in Tokyo in August 2007. His talk entitled A New Teaching Concept in the Life Sciences Removes Any Need for Animal Models was based on an innovative new methodology developed from over forty years of university teaching experience.
"Practical teaching for students of the life science remains in the dark ages. While computer simulations of animal experiments are now, thankfully, more common than live studies, many experimental designs and teaching objectives lack modern relevance. With a pre-determined outcome in most cases, such experiments are the antithesis of the spirit of scientific enquiry and fail dismally to motivate students.
Given an opportunity to abandon this traditional approach in our courses in second and third year Physiology in Medicine and Science at the University of Adelaide, I introduced an entirely new approach focused on teaching the scientific method of problem-solving as a life-long learning experience. In this model, groups of five to seven students are recruited into self-sufficient research teams, which conceive, design and execute individual research projects, using themselves and colleagues as the experimental subjects. The student groups each work in their own laboratory module, equipped with the basic research infrastructure appropriate for data collection and analysis of the physiological system at the core of their research project.
Laboratory sessions are 3-4 hours each week for 12 weeks, with an academic staff member available for consultation and student performance assessed progressively using both oral and written methods, all designed to reinforce the research experience. While the central theme has been to provide practical experience in the scientific method of problem-solving, their very nature ensures enhanced factual knowledge.
Although developed in the context of physiology the concept can be applied in any science discipline, at any stage of education, because the primary focus is more on "process" than "content". This new teaching methodology not only provides the students with an important life-long learning experience of immeasurable value to their post-graduate careers, but is also an unambiguous opportunity to remove animals from teaching, now and for ever."