An Interview with Peter Hanna
“Int” refers to the interviewer and “Peter” refers to Peter Hanna
Int:	Peter, to begin with I’m interested in the aims or purposes of the subjects you teach and how they contribute to students’ education in a range of areas I think, the biological sciences, biomedical science, and biotechnology. So, what are the general purposes of those units and how do they contribute to students’ learning?
Peter:	I take three units. One is a core unit within biology and forensic sciences and the biotechnology course . It’s called Genetics, it’s second year. It’s fairly clear nowadays that genetics is a core to nearly everything in biology; I’ll come back onto that point. But the other two subjects are Microbiology Techniques which is all the new thing of cloning and PCA amplifying, DNA profiling, all those sorts of things including diagnostics nowadays, etcetera. And another one, a little bit more off track, is immunology, which is really just booming along nowadays and is, you know, stem cell sort of stuff and how cells talk to each other and how we stop invaders getting into our… pathogens getting into our system, but how we recognise self, non-self. A huge amount of stuff going on, you know, with transplants and growing limbs and … So immunology is, sort of, close to all that sort of area as well. All exciting.
Int:	It does sound very exciting, Peter, very exciting.
Peter:	I learnt – incidentally, I learn more every day now that I did when I was doing VCE.
Int:	Well look, on that point, Peter, in terms of learning about teaching subjects effectively, what’s your view about how you do teach effectively in these types of subjects? What does it mean to actually get quality learning happening in this field?
Peter:	Teaching is a – I wouldn’t call it a dirty word – teaching is almost saying that this is what it’s about. I think you do a little bit of that. What you’re trying to do is explain the framework of these subjects and how it relates to the modern world. Being the age I am, I have lots of little stories that I weave into it all and so I think teaching is about giving practical examples and seeing – making it relevant. Why should you be doing genetics in the current world? Why should you being doing microbiology techniques? Why should you be doing immunology? You don’t just teach it as a textbook stuff, and I think that’s what I mean by ‘teaching is a dirty word’ that way. I like to give the – have a topic and involve some basics and then extending it out into what I call the applied world, be it in plants, animals, veterinary, diagnostics, medicine, whatever. Relating to the students themselves.
Int:	Do you find that modern day students are looking for that sense of relevance more than they did in the past? That they’re not as accepting of things which are........
Peter:	No, I…..
Int:	Dry and theoretical and not seen to be relevant to the modern world of science practice.
Peter:	No, I think – I think you need that framework. I think if you make it interesting enough they’ll listen to the stories and – some people are there still, I think, just to get a degree and there’s – so you do have perhaps a few people that are there and just ticking away. But nowadays people are paying for their degrees and they – and they expect more of it. They expect you to actually give them those experiences and they want to come out knowing how to face the world having done those things. I think that’s a slight change now particularly with more, you know, the HECS and they’ve got to pay that back again at some stage. They do expect, I think, more out of what we do.
Int:	What are the sort of particular learning needs that you find students have? I mean, with the experience do you find students who tend to have particular challenges with the subject or misconceptions that you’ve got to correct. You know, what are the really deeper learning challenges in regard to mastering the subjects you teach.
Peter:	The good students just show out so much. They just eat the stuff up. They can’t sort of get enough of it, and the others sit back in a little bit of awe, you know, sort of the amount of stuff that’s there and just how – how sort of novel – As I said to you at the beginning, I learn more every day now than when I did VCE. I just can’t keep up with some of the areas. And I actually say that to the students; this is an area that’s not my specialty and I try to keep up as much as I can, you know, to present to you a topic. But it’s just exploding, like, it’s getting down more and more to fundamentals. However, at the level we teach in a degree you try to link it all together. You try to get them to come out with some skills that relate, particularly molecular biology to genetics and the immunology to plant work – anything they go into. They can go from a hospital to somewhere else and it’s the techniques they’re taking with them – the skills and the understanding so that they can then go out and tackle something new. And they’re not frightened to do it.
Int:	I guess it’s a fairly technology intensive type of teaching and learning environment more generally. I mean, leaving aside things like Deakin Studies Online, I mean they have to learn how to use equipment and so on in a laboratory. What is the role of digital media and technology more generally in terms of their mastering these subjects.
Peter:	Digital media comes in different forms. Very clearly, they’ve got to have computers and have to access computers. With the Genome Project and us now having sequenced mini-Genomes now, and it’s growing all the time, we’re starting to find that we are – perhaps we humans are not so unique. We are very similar to monkeys. As a matter of fact they’re thinking of putting the chimpanzee into – with a human group. Because the number of genes we have – we thought we used to have a 100,000 but it’s now back to about 30, maybe even 20, it’s the way we use them. So, bioinformatics, that is, all the databases around the world now are linked and we expect the students to be able to use computers, which is digital, and to be able to access all that information. If they don’t when they go out, I mean, how can they face the world if they don’t know how to do that. Now, on top of that, all the instruments now are microscopes. Instead of drawing something down a microscope now you have a digital camera on the top. You email pictures to yourself and you can put – I put them on DSO. So, that’s one of the ways I put digital images on for their practical work. We take the best preparations and we digitise them. On DSO they download them and put them into their report books and they label them. Another digital form; when we run a DNA job we separate DNA or proteins and gels, paper whatever, but mainly gels now – we view them under a digital camera and grab that image and so, once again, it’s like the textbooks. All the publications now go like this; it’s a digital image. And then I’ve got a digital camera. Some of the things we just actually take a photograph of; it goes on as well. So, all of it is digitised and goes on as pictures onto practical reports in DSO. They download those and we don’t give them all the answers, they’re expected to interpret what’s happening in the results that they’re seeing. In other words, in a gel, what are the sizes, they mark them on. What’s the difference between laying one or two to the other thing that they did? Why is the sizes different? And that’s coming into their understanding of the whole thing.
Int:	It’s interesting that you…..
Peter:	But it’s textbook stuff.
Int:	Okay. You know, you need some bioinformatics and the school is developing a wholly on-line unit, Science Skills in Context to be offered at first year level tied in with Biology A and one of the key areas of study is bioinformatics where it’s going to be a module in that wholly on-line unit. Do you have a growing sense of the assumptions that you can make about students’ technology literacy or information literacy relevant to the key fields of biology in terms of them being prepared coming into your later subjects?
Peter:	I found a couple of years ago there were a few students who hadn’t even switched a computer on. Now, I find that every student uses the computer more and more and DSO is just a part of it. As a matter of fact, they’re using DSO all the time and the size of things really don’t matter either. I mean, someone was saying the other day that they thought the size of some of the things in there were a bit big to download like Powerpoint lectures and the students actually want to print them in colours but I’ve actually found that some of them give their passwords to their parents and they print them out at work so they all can come out with coloured pictures now. So, DSO is - now the parents are seeing.
Int:	So, you mentioned this thing about the digital imaging this process and that was going to be almost my next question to explain the logistics of stepping us through what students do. Would you like to just run through that again for us?
Peter:	Let’s say in the practical – hands on. We have some DNA and we put an enzyme in that cuts it. It will cut that into different sizes depending upon where the cutting sites are. Now, if we load in lane 1 on a gel, like, there’s a hole and we load the DNA and we have some commercial sizes that we put in there so we can measure sizes against the – the experiment against those sizes, then in lane 1 we can put uncut – lane 2, 3, or whatever, cut, et cetera, et cetera. So, we put an electric current through that, we run it and then we stain it and we take a digital picture of that, and put it on DSO. The students can then go back and say right, what were the commercial sizes and they can actually write those in so that when they’ve got that down the left-hand side – ah, the uncut vector, which is a circle, ran there or there – hang on I’ve got three bands there, why are there three bands? Well, the circle can be an open circle, it can be super cooled and run very fast or can be cut and run as a linear molecule so we get three, all the same size, but they move at different places so it gives them this understanding of how things move in a gel. Next if we cut and there’s an insert in, we’ll have different sized bands and so it’s just wonderful. And so, with our Recombinant DNA work, we can actually take vectors that have inserts inside the vector and we can measure the size of them just by running a gel like this. We cut it, the vector will be big and run up high, they’ll run very fast through the gel and the inserts run very fast through the gel, and so you’ll see a band down there. They can measure the size of the insert. We expect them to do that.
Int:	These are just the little things but they create a real benefit.
Peter:	And then they go to the textbooks and the publications and they can read them and understand them.
Int:	If we lived in an ideal world in regard to using digital media and on-line to enhance your teaching and the quality of student learning, are there things that you’d like to do in the future that we can’t quite do at the moment?
Peter:	I think you can do them, it’s a matter of us leaning more about DSO and I think the lecturers and the people presenting the material are learning more and more. I think all of us are on a learning phase in doing that and the students appreciate getting more and more material. I would like to put in more short tests. I think all the students now, I’m hearing more over the last year or two because they’re paying for their courses, before they go to an exam they want a practice exam, even put it on. And they want some practice answers. So, that type of thing. What else? I’d like to build into some of the lectures some m-pegs, take the digital camera and take some more little m-pegs and say 30 seconds and actually show some of these things actually working in a time-frame. You know, take a picture of a gel and another one, another one and actually show the band – if you run that fast that then moves so it gives them an idea of just something in slow motion or, you know, just small pictures of things actually happening. But I think there’s a lot to put in there. I think we’re just actually starting to hit the surface of presenting material.
Int:	And a sort of general question to finish off, Peter, being an experienced academic and teacher in the whole field and you say you’re still learning as you go along teaching these subjects, what sort of advice would you give to a newer, younger academic staff member entering university teaching today about how they should prepare themselves to be a good teacher and development their academic teaching career?
Peter:	I would certainly use all the digital facilities available, DSO and put on the lectures and all these things. I think it’s them, the students are now becoming really computer literate, you know, about these things. In the essence, I think don’t put too much into them but put some more stories. Try to not make it a textbook type of material but link it to other sources. Use it as a database rather as a – and, for example, in some of them we’ve actually put the web sites in so they can just click on it and go to those. And I think that takes them from this site to other sites, because all this is just expanding. I’m shifting house just currently and I’m throwing out all the old books. I just don’t want an old museum any more. It’s all electronic. If I want anything I go through electronically – I go to modern libraries. I – the books go out of date so quickly. That’s hard copy stuff.
Int:	Yeah. But how do you find the stories? I mean, do you just search…..
Peter:	No, no, these are…..
Int:	Somewhat accidental finds?
Peter:	Give you an example – immunology. Talking about vaccination. I remember my mum and grandmums and that, way back when I was a kid having measles parties and one of the mums would – the kids would have measles so they’d invite all the kids in the district around and they’d have one cup. All the kids got measles and so they were all vaccinated because they knew that by vaccinating for measles it protected you for later in life, and so there were these measles and mumps parties. You don’t want to get mumps when you’re an older person, particularly a male, it can almost sterilise you, you know, it can be really terrible. It’s easy to get mumps when you’re a kid you’re sort of over it in two or three days. So, they had these parties. So, that’s just one of the little stories you sort of weave into, you know, vaccinations. The other one is I saw people with leg irons and my uncle used to work in the Spastic Society. Now, the spastic society now is probably defunct, but people were in iron lungs because of polio. And it was just terrible. You know, I just remember these – when I was a kid just seeing – reading about these people who had callipers on and seeing them and having – talking about people who were in iron lungs to breathe for the rest of their lives because they had this polio virus. Nowadays with sabin and salk, you know, we don’t have it. Fantastic.
Int:	So, an experienced academic teacher…..
Peter:	You just talk about those things.
Int:	Can find and create and present well stories which engage students and…..
Peter:	A little bit.
Int:	In substantive content in the field.
Peter:	A little bit. I think people on – religious people do that on a Sunday with a sermon. I think that’s how they get their stories across too. I think a lot of people, experienced people, use earthly type of – when I say earthly – experienced type facilities to get stories across or messages and it really relates to the modern world, let’s face it, you know, genetics hasn’t gone away. Genetics was around then, just that we know so much more about it that it underpins all the things that we do, the viruses and, you know, preons and mad cows disease, we’re learning more and more about. So, it’s still there.
Int:	Well, Peter, on that interesting biblical note I’ll say Amen and thank you.
Peter:	Thanks.
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