Microbiology 204 Fall 2014

Microbiology 204 Fall 2014

Discussions:

Discussion sessions will focus on a single paper each week on a topic recently covered in lecture. 33% of the grade will come from participation in discussion sessions. Everyone should read the paper carefully and try to understand it well. Attention should be paid to each figure with regard to what is going on in the experiment and what can be concluded from it. In addition, 3 or 4 students will receive specific assignments ranging from looking up a background paper to explaining how a particular method works, to thinking up a model for how the system might work, etc. This usually requires a bit of additional reading and/or thinking about the material by that student. People with assignments should be prepared to contribute to the general discussion in addition to contributing their special knowledge. One of the assignments each week is student discussion leader (see below). Finally, a faculty member will be present each week to help the discussion, but ideally the faculty member should contribute less to the discussion than most of the students. If you need some help with the paper or your assignment, see the faculty member who’ll be at the discussion session, or the course director, Tony DeFranco.

Discussion Leader Instructions:

The discussion leader's job is to make sure there is a good discussion of the paper, and to do this by bringing out appropriate comments from the other participants. It is essential that the discussion leader understands the paper thoroughly. If there are things you don't understand, please go one of the course faculty or the TA, and have that person clarify the issues for you. Next, the discussion leader should plan an outline of the discussion. I'd recommend bringing an outline to class to help with keeping things going in the appropriate direction. Generally, you need to start with the background. What are the big issues that the authors are trying to address? What do we know already? Next, move on to the results section. Decide which figures you want to cover in detail and which you want to skip or cover quickly. You should not cover each figure equally, as most papers have a few key figures and a few figures which are primarily controls or supporting information. The rest of the class has been told they don’t need to look at the supplemental materials, but if you want to go over a supplemental figure that is fine (there may be one or two that are important enough to go over). In this case, you’ll probably have to lead as the other students may not have read it.

For each figure covered in depth, it is important to consider exactly what the experiment is and what it can tell us. What idea was being tested? What are the results? What can be concluded from just this figure? Are the authors' interpretations justified or are they over-interpreting their data? Finally, put it together and discuss, what can we conclude from all of the results presented in the paper? Again, have the authors over-interpreted their data or are they justified in their conclusions? Is the title justified or an over-interpretation? Remember to fit the assignments of the other students into this framework.

Once you have a clear plan for the discussion, the idea is to have the rest of the people at the discussion bring out the points. This shouldn't be a lecture on your part. Rather, you should get people oriented as to where you are going and then ask questions to get the discussion flowing. Some of the discussion will consist of the students with the assignments letting the group know what they learned. When you hit these points in the discussion, you can call on the appropriate student by name. Note that the assignments should be no more than one half of the total discussion. The students with assignments should be concise. If they are describing another paper, they should hit the highlights and NOT go through all the figures of the additional paper (1 or 2 figures is OK or just a summary). If the discussants initially miss an important point, use questions to bring this out. (Is there some other interpretation of this result? What else do we know about somatic hypermutation? etc.). Obviously, to do this well the discussion leader must have a clear idea of what he or she wants to be said. The discussion leader needs to allow the discussion to flow at times and at other times to stop things from getting too far off track or from going around in circles (“OK, I think we have covered that issue pretty well, lets go on to Figure 3, what did the authors do in this experiment?”). One thing that may be helpful is to keep an eye on the clock and have some idea what is the minimal amount of time to finish up if you are running behind. Please try to get through all of the assignments and to have at least a few minutes at the end for general consideration of "is this a good paper?" "What did we learn from this paper?" etc. Let’s try to be balanced. A paper may make an important contribution even it isn’t perfect in some regards. Moreover, rarely are all of the issues fully answered. Conversely, it is good to see where the limitations are. Sometimes the biological relevance is indicated by an experimental system that is somewhat contrived and may not be fully reflective of real situations, etc. The final 10 minutes is a good time to discuss what did we learn and what are the limitations and are those limitations important or minor. Also, it can be worthwhile to consider, what are the next questions?