Melissa Armstrong is a PhD candidate in the Zoology Department, studying the neuroscience underlying how birds use visual information to guide their flight behavior. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design and worked as an artist and designer for nearly a decade before deciding to return to school for …
Author Archives: Christine Goedhart
Remote Teaching 2020: The Biggest Lessons Learned
By Christine Goedhart This year has turned out to be one big, huge, messy exercise in learning how to teach remotely. You’ve been asked (forced, really) to step outside of your comfort zone, experiment with new techniques and technologies, and become an online instructor. I’ve had the privilege of working and talking with many of …
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Teaching Spotlight – Using a Virtual “Snowball Fight” to Build Community
Jennifer Klenz and Stella Lee recently used a virtual “snowball fight” to help them get to know their BIOL 234 students. Below, Jennifer describes this activity, the role it has played in building a sense of community in the course, and its connection to another course assignment. How did you come up with the idea …
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Effective Educational Videos: Principles and Guidelines for Maximizing Student Learning from Video Content
This month’s interesting read provides evidence-based considerations and tips for creating and using videos to promote student engagement and learning. Key recommendations include: Keep videos brief and targeted on learning goals Use audio and visual elements to convey appropriate parts of an explanation; consider how to make these elements complementary rather than redundant Use signaling …
Instructor Spotlight – Vivienne Lam
Vivienne is a Lecturer in the Departments of Botany and Zoology. She has a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from UBC, a B.Ed. (Secondary School) from UBC, and a Ph.D in Botany from UBC, where she studied the phylogeny and comparative genomics of mycoheterotrophic plants. Vivienne has taught a variety of courses at UBC, including BIOL 121 …
TA Spotlight – James Marchant
I completed my undergraduate degree in general biology at the University of Western Brittany, Brest, France. I then completed a Master’s in marine biology at the European Institute of marine studies, Plouzané, France, where my research focused on calcium flux in cardiac cells for studying the cellular basis of fish cardiac performance. This first …
Reflecting on Remote Teaching: What Have You Learned?
By Christine Goedhart Congratulations on surviving the 2020 mass migration to emergency remote teaching! Now that the dust has settled and final grades are submitted, it’s a good time to reflect on the past term and consider what lessons you might want to take with you moving forward. Here are four simple, yet powerful questions …
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Online educators’ recommendations for teaching online: Crowdsourcing in action
What makes for effective online teaching? In this month’s interesting read, a crowd-sourcing methodology was used to pose this question to a large number of experienced online instructors from a variety of disciplines. Their collective answers were coded and four overarching themes emerged: 1) supporting student success, 2) providing clarity and relevance through content structure …
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Staff Spotlight – Maki Sumitani
Maki Sumitani is the Learning Technology Support for UBC Biology, where she supports instructors and the Biology Program with tools for teaching and learning. What do you enjoy most about your current role? There is a lot of problem solving in this role, and working with people to tackle those challenges and building relationships make that work so rewarding. …
Teaching Spotlight – Valentine’s Day Card Assignment
Bridgette Clarkston received lots of love from her BIOL 121 students this term in the form of biology-themed Valentine’s Day cards. Students were tasked to create a set of Valentine’s Day cards that incorporated concepts from the course, and as you can see from the display on her door in the pictures above, they definitely …
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TA Spotlight – Donald Wong
Donald received his undergraduate degree from UBC in Cell Biology and Genetics. During that time, he took a course on cell biology that discussed unusual cellular structures found in unicellular eukaryotes, or protists. From this, he gained an appreciation of the evolutionary processes and genetics that underlie this massive diversity found in protists and lesser-studied …
Instructor Spotlight – Abel Rosado
Got a good caption for this photo? Please share in the “comments” section below! Abel Rosado is an Assistant Professor in Cell Biology in the Botany Department and holds a Canada Research Chair Tier 2 in Plant Cellular Dynamics. He has a BSc. in Chemistry, an MSc in Cancer Biochemistry and a PhD in Plant …
5 Ways to Practice Self-care When Teaching From Home
By Christine Goedhart One of the biggest challenges of teaching from home during the COVID-19 pandemic is the inevitable integration of work and life, making it easy to work all day long. However, working non-stop can have devastating effects on your physical and mental health, causing stress and burn out, and ultimately diminishing the quality …
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TA Spotlight – Jan Xue
Jan completed her BSc in Biology at UBC. At the beginning of her undergraduate degree, she spent a summer working at the Arnold Arboretum, a breathtaking and beautiful museum of trees collected from around the world. There, a life-long affair with the botanical sciences was well on its way. During her time as an undergraduate, …
Factors Influencing Quality of Team Discussion
How can we get students to have more productive discussions during group work experiences? In this month’s “interesting read”, researchers explored this question by analyzing student discussions in response to lower-level versus higher-level questions, as measured according to Bloom’s taxonomy. They found that higher-level questions stimulated more meaningful group discussions than lower-level questions. Based on …
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Answers to Your Most Pressing Questions About Group Work
By Christine Goedhart There are a lot of decisions to make when thinking about how to implement group work, and I’ve noticed that there are a handful of questions that I frequently get from instructors regarding how to best structure group work in their courses. In general, the group work structure that will work best …
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TA Spotlight – Wesley Gerelle
Wesley was born in Surrey, BC but grew up in Kelowna, BC. He pursued a BSc in Biology at UBCO and then transferred to UBC Vancouver to complete it. He started out thinking he’d be in a zoology field, but ended up falling for botany after taking an introduction to vascular plants course (BIOL 210). …
Instructor Spotlight – Kathryn Zeiler
Kathryn Zeiler is a senior instructor at the University of British Columbia. She has a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of South Florida (USF) College of Medicine studying nitrogen metabolism in the green alga, Chlorella vulgaris, and an undergraduate degree in Botany – also from USF. Kathryn has been teaching at …
TA Spotlight – Thomas Whelan
Thomas Whelan is a PhD candidate in Dr. Naomi Fast’s lab in the Department of Botany. He is from Toronto and completed his undergraduate degree at Dalhousie University in Halifax. It was during his time there that he became interested in protists (microbial eukaryotes) when he worked on his honours project with Dr. Alastair Simpson. …
A Win-Win: Making Mid-course Student Feedback Useful For Instructors AND Students
By Christine Goedhart The half-way point of a course is a great time to ask students for feedback. It is far enough into the course where students are able to draw upon their experience to give meaningful feedback, while also providing you enough time to make changes based on that feedback. Additionally, mid-course feedback sets …
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Teaching Spotlight – Student-produced Mycology Slideshow Displayed in the Beaty Museum
As part of a biodiversity survey in the BIOL323 introductory mycology course last term, students identified and illustrated fungi that they collected from the UBC Farm. Students were then tasked to create informational slides to present these local fungi species to the public. The resulting slideshow presentation will be displayed in the Beaty Museum at …
Instructor Spotlight – Angie O’Neill
Angie O’Neill is a Senior Instructor in the Department of Zoology. She has a BSc in Animal Biology and a MSc in Zoology, both from the University of British Columbia. Angie started teaching at UBC as a Sessional Lecturer in 2005, and over the past fifteen years she has taught a variety of courses. Currently, …
Christine Goedhart – Bio
Christine Goedhart, PhD Science Education Specialist University of British Columbia christine.goedhart@botany.ubc.ca Born and raised in a suburb of Los Angeles, I began my undergraduate studies at Fullerton College before transferring to Cal State Fullerton, where I earned a BS in Biology. I then went to UC Irvine, where I completed a PhD in Biological …
Understanding the Role of Teaching Practices in Student Well-being
What teaching practices promote student well-being? This question was answered in a TLEF-funded study conducted at UBC that used a mixed methods approach to identify teaching strategies that support student well-being. Strategies are grouped into three main themes: 1) Connection and Social Belonging, 2) Learning and Motivation to Learn, and 3) Holistic support The authors …
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How To Make “Group Work” Work For You
By Christine Goedhart Group work is a common component of an active learning classroom and can be a great way to help students learn. However, anyone who has ever tried to facilitate group work in their course knows that results can vary. Group work experiences can go really well, can be a complete disaster, or …
TA Spotlight – Haley Branch
Haley Branch completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto (UofT), where she double majored in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Forest Conservation Science. Her passion and interest in plants began in her second year when she first took a plant form and function class. This led her to complete a Master’s degree in …
Instructor Spotlight – Amy Angert
Amy Angert is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Botany and Zoology. She has an undergraduate degree in Biology from Washington University in St. Louis and a PhD in Plant Biology from Michigan State University. Prior to coming to UBC, she completed a Postdoc in Ecology and Evolution at the University of Arizona. Her …
Early failure supports future learning
In this month’s interesting read study, an interdisciplinary team at UBC took a different approach to teaching cell-biology topics. Students first struggled to solve complex problems, which primed them to learn the expert solution via a series of interactive activities – activating prior knowledge, then sifting through the available information, to arrive at a solution. …
An Instructor’s Guide To Finding Work-Life Balance
By Christine Goedhart A major benefit of an instructor position is having a flexible work schedule. However, without defined work hours, work can expand to take up all waking hours. This is because there is always something to do. If we’re not physically teaching in the classroom, we can be preparing for class, reflecting on …
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TA Spotlight – Soren Huber
Soren Huber is a MSc student in the Botany department, supervised by Patrick Martone. Her current research involves phylogenetic and morphometric analysis of coralline algae. Some of her side projects have included assisting with intertidal macroalgal biodiversity surveys, Martone lab collections, and sea urchin feeding trials. As a young adult, Soren was torn between majoring …