The planning for BC Bio 2021 is underway! The details are still being worked out, but we will be holding BC Bio 2021 on Wednesday, May 12th, 2021. It will most likely be 3h in the afternoon (Pacific Time Zone), but we are still working on confirming speakers.

Our current working title for the theme is “Looking Back to Move Forward – Evolving our Collective Teaching Practice”

Hope to see everyone there!

Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay in posting this. We had some technical difficulties with processing the video that took a while to work out. As you can see, the video is now posted below.

If you are a college/ university Biology educator in Bc (and beyond?) and would like to join out Slack channel, please feel free to send an email to robin (dot) young (at) abc (dot) ca.

Just a quick note to say that we have now closed. If you still want to attend, please contact the organizers directly.

Are you struggling to write useful assessments for your course in this new teaching landscape? Are you wondering what you can do to improve in the short-term? Join us on June 24th for a new BCBio workshop!

Title: Creative Assessment for Online Science Teaching

Presenter: Dr. Ben Wiggins, University of Washington
 
Date: Wednesday June 24th, 2:00-3:00 PM (the presenter will stick around for extra questions afterward)
 
Description: It is completely normal to be overwhelmed by the logistical difficulties of giving traditional written STEM exams in an online environment. Here we’ll examine alternative methods to achieving career-relevant learning on exams in ways that can rise above tradition and motivate students to engage more deeply in your class.

Goals: Participants in the workshop will:

• Frame the challenges faced by their students through the education principles of alignment and sociocultural learning
• Pick from a toolkit of short-term changes that may improve the exam experience
• Assess longer-term avenues for larger assessments changes that may be appropriate for particular courses
• Design a piece of an assessment for your course

Come join in and connect with our teaching community, share ideas, and leave with a few new ones.

Please register before the workshop here, and fill out our short survey. Registration closes Tuesday June 23rd at 4pm.

With special thanks to Elizabeth Steves for organizing this event for all of us.

Thanks to everyone who came out to BC Bio this week. Your enthusiasm and willingness to try out this online format made it a wonderful success! We really hope to keep the sense of community going as we move forward, and are working at ways to do that. If you registered, you will received an email with further material from the event.

Peter Newbury’s talk on Building Community in an Online Course

Joan Sharp’s talk on Learning from our Students (and Colleagues): My 40 years in Biology Education

Stay safe everyone! Can’t wait to see you all again soon!

Please note that registration for BC Bio is now closed.

BC Bio is in less than a week! Here’s the plan for the 2-hour session (May 13th, 2-4pm):

We will open the zoom environment up between 15 and 30 minutes early, to allow everyone time to check their connections, and test audio/ video. Please feel free to join us and say hello!

• 2:00-2:10: Arrivals, welcome, land acknowledgement, ground rules
• 2:10-2:25: “Building Community in Online Classes” Short talk by Peter Newbury, Director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning, UBCO
• 2:25-3:05: “Learning from our Students: My 40 years in Biology Education” Plenary talk by Joan Sharp, Teaching Professor SFU
• 3:05-3:10: Transition to Breakout Sessions, Round A
• 3:10-3:25: Breakout Sessions, Round A (15 min)
• 3:25-3:30: Return from breakout sessions, and transition to Round B
• 3:30-3:45: Breakout Sessions Round B (15 min)
• 3:45-4:00 (and beyond, if folks wish to stay): Report on breakout rooms, chat, socialize, discuss.

If you haven’t registered yet, there’s still time! Click here to register (link removed)!

About the Breakout Rooms:

We will have two round of breakout rooms (we have named them Rounds A & B). During the first 30 minutes of the event, you will be asked to navigate to a Google Doc and sign up for one session in Round A, and one session in Round B. At 2:30pm, we will take this information and build the breakout groups. We will only have space for a specific number of members in each breakout room, so we please ask you to choose another room if all of the spots are full.

Here is a draft list of the breakout rooms we are considering (subject to change).

Round A:

• Online Course Design
• Continuing the conversation with Peter Newbury: Developing course community
• Continuing the conversation Joan Sharp: Connecting with students and pedagogy
• Hands-on lab activities at home
• Active learning in an online environment
• Course planning: asynchronous vs synchronous components
• Instructor workload and burnout
• Best practices in asynchronous environments
• Supporting TAs
• No specific topic, I just want to chat!

Round B:

• Effective videos and lecture-capture
• Inclusivity & Accessibility
• Academic integrity and assessment
• Structuring labs
• Large classes
• Semester-long group projects
• Student approaches to learning
• Increasing engagement in asynchronous environments
• Exams and assessments
• No specific topic, I just want to chat!

Like many folks in BC, we are carefully considering the rapidly changing world events in the planning of BC Bio. Since this event is tied to the BC and Yukon Biology Articulation Meeting we are considering them as a unit. We’d really like this event to run, but but not at the expense of human health, and it is impossible to predict where things will stand by May 13th. For now we are continuing with our planning of this event. This is a relatively small, regional conference, with no expectation of international participants, so based on this we are still considered to be a low risk event. We are considering best practices as laid out by the Health Canada Guidelines in our event planning. We are also taking time to ensure that our registration system will be able to easily offer full refunds, should the need arise.

We encourage you to also plan for contingency in your preparations for attendance. We will continue to monitor the situation, and will work to have our registration up and running as soon as possible. We will keep you informed as best we can.

Cheers,

Robin