Life Sciences Term 2

Introduction

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  This introductory online synchronous meeting will take place on Date | Time. Attendance is compulsory.

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  Cognitive demand levels in Life Sciences

  To revise what was discussed in the previous Term 1 course, let's re-look at Bloom's taxonomy for thinking:

  
  

  
  Remember that in Life Sciences, the last three levels are combined so that a FOUR level of cognitive demand is used:

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  Degrees of difficulty

  To judge the level of difficulty of each examination/test question, you need to consider both the demands that each question makes on the cognitive schema of an average learner and the intrinsic difficulty of the question or task. To make this judgment, you need to identify where the difficulty or ease in a particular question resides.

  The framework for thinking about question or item difficulty comprises the following four general categories of difficulty:
  

  • Content (topic/concept) difficulty
  • Stimulus (question and source material) difficulty
  • Task (process) difficulty
  • Expected response (memo) difficulty.

  
  

• Framework for thinking about question difficulty

  Examiners should analyse the items in their papers to ensure the paper is not too easy or too difficult even if the cognitive demand of the paper is according to the standard.
  

  
  

• Course overview (32 hours)

  The following modules will be covered in this online workshop:

  1. Genetics and heredity
  2. The human nervous system
  3. The human eye
  4. The human ear
  5. Endocrine system.

  
  

• Course materials

  The following resources are applicable to this Life Sciences T2 online course.

• DBE and MGSLG. (2020). Life Sciences T2 Course Manual File 5.9MB
• DBE. (2011). CAPS Life Sciences GR 10-12 Web File
• DBE. (2013). Circular S5 File
• DBE. (2017). Life Sciences GR 12 Exam Guide File
• DBE. (2019). Diagnostic Report 2019 - Book 1 (Chapter 8 Life Sciences) File
• Course structure

  • The Life Sciences T2 online course is divided into the five modules detailed above
  • The entire Life Sciences T2 course manual is downloadable under the section titled 'Course Materials'
  • This manual is also divided into the five modules and listed in the respective module's 'Study materials' section
  • Each module has numerous activities which we require all participants to complete
  • Participants will be referred to the respective module's course manual to get the details of the activities
  • Activities are required to be completed in a Word document
  • Please number the activities and answers exactly as detailed in the course manual
  • The same Word document must be used for ALL the activities in the relevant module i.e. one Word document per module
  • The Word document must be saved in the following format: Full name_Module 1, Full name_Module 2, Full name_Module 3 etc...
  • At the end of each module participants will be requested to submit their Word document using the assignment submission tool.