The days are getting warmer and the snow is melting away. Spring is the time when a young person's fancy turns to .... poster presentations.Every year at this time the lobby of my building fills up with poster presentations from undergraduate courses. Today it's the turn of a course called HMB322H "Human Diseases in our Society." This course is part of our "Human Biology" program. One of the assignments in the course is to shadow a health care professional (usually a researcher) and report on the kinds of things he/she does in a typical week.
The posters are supposed to explain the research/professional activity. Grades for the assignment are based on the quality of the poster as well as the explanation given by the student as the judges question them about their project.
The idea behind this assignment is to make 3rd year students familiar with the activities of a health care worker and provide them with an opportunity to practice their skills at presenting their findings to fellow students.
The Human Biology program1 is run by a colleague of mine, Valerie Watt, and I'm a big fan of the innovative ideas she's trying out in the courses. Not all of them are going to work but at least she's trying to find new ways of teaching. The students I talked to seemed pretty excited about their shadowing experiences.
1. I'm not a fan of the program, especially the sub-specialty called "Health & Disease" that these students are taking. I don't think that's an appropriate area of concentration for an Honors B.Sc. degree from the University of Toronto. I'd prefer to have them concentrate on basic fundamental science.
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