Incorporating Mastermind to Help Undergraduate Neurobiology Students Improve Their Ability to Build Scientific Arguments
Location
Room 1005
Proposal Track
Research Project
Session Format
Poster
Abstract
To develop into effective researchers, educators and science professionals, students must understand the basic principles of reasoning and scientific design. This pilot study was carried out to determine if the incorporation of the Mastermind game into the classroom setting could help students improve their critical thinking skills and their ability to build stronger scientific arguments. Approximately 20-30 neurobiology students were given a practice data set from key neuroscience experiments and asked to analyze and develop further experiments from the information. Students were also asked to play an online version of the Mastermind game and record how many trials it took them to break the Mastermind color code. Over the course of three sessions, the average scores earned on increased from 7.5 to 15.11 out of 20 points. When this work began, students’ responses were inexperienced and their ability to draw concrete conclusions from the given data was underdeveloped, but these skills dramatically improved during this study. Yet, there were no significant improvements in the number of trials it took for students to break the Mastermind code. Our findings support the belief that the Mastermind game can help students develop their critical thinking skills, especially in the context of scientific thinking.
Keywords
Games, Critical thinking, Scientific arguments
Recommended Citation
Johnston, Lindsey, "Incorporating Mastermind to Help Undergraduate Neurobiology Students Improve Their Ability to Build Scientific Arguments" (2014). Georgia Educational Research Association Conference. 15.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gera/2014/2014/15
Incorporating Mastermind to Help Undergraduate Neurobiology Students Improve Their Ability to Build Scientific Arguments
Room 1005
To develop into effective researchers, educators and science professionals, students must understand the basic principles of reasoning and scientific design. This pilot study was carried out to determine if the incorporation of the Mastermind game into the classroom setting could help students improve their critical thinking skills and their ability to build stronger scientific arguments. Approximately 20-30 neurobiology students were given a practice data set from key neuroscience experiments and asked to analyze and develop further experiments from the information. Students were also asked to play an online version of the Mastermind game and record how many trials it took them to break the Mastermind color code. Over the course of three sessions, the average scores earned on increased from 7.5 to 15.11 out of 20 points. When this work began, students’ responses were inexperienced and their ability to draw concrete conclusions from the given data was underdeveloped, but these skills dramatically improved during this study. Yet, there were no significant improvements in the number of trials it took for students to break the Mastermind code. Our findings support the belief that the Mastermind game can help students develop their critical thinking skills, especially in the context of scientific thinking.
