Molecular Skit-Role-Play as a Pedagogical Tool for Teaching Molecular Biology as an Under-Graduate Engineering Course

Abstract

Role-play is an exercise in which the participants assume certain roles of characters, collaboratively create stories and act-out the roles in character on stage. Role-Play is being practiced as a pedagogical approach since years and has been found to be effective in teaching history, economics, social sciences and engineering subjects as well. The present study discusses a similar effort of group role play practiced for teaching Molecular Biology course for under-graduate students of Biotechnology. The purpose of the Role-Play-Molecular Skit was to enhance the temporal and spatial learning of some selected concepts of Molecular Biology course. The topics chosen were relevant to learning and formed the corner-stones of the course. The exercise comprised two phases-technical script writing and acting-out.

The concept of story-building model related to the topic along-with the technical aspects was adopted for script writing. The contents of the scripts were reviewed for essential technical features, effectiveness and feasibility for acting-out. This was followed by assigning the roles amongst the group members and acting-out the concepts on stage. Assessment for the activity was based on appropriate rubrics which were mapped to Graduate Attributes, Global outcomes and Performance indicators. A formal written feedback collected from the participants showed that the activity was a new experience, enhanced the understanding of the concept, sensitized their creativity by story building, honed their writing skills and reinforced their confidence of acting on stage. The activity was thus instrumental in enhancing the learning, improving the communication skills and bringing-in a concerted team effort on stage.