Connecting you to what's happening in the UBC Biology Program
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 …
Continue reading “5 Ways to Practice Self-care When Teaching From Home”
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, …
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 …
Continue reading “Factors Influencing Quality of Team Discussion”
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 …
Continue reading “Answers to Your Most Pressing Questions About Group Work”
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). …
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 …
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. …
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 …
Continue reading “A Win-Win: Making Mid-course Student Feedback Useful For Instructors AND Students”
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 …
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, 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 …
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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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 …
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 …
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 …
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. …
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 …
Continue reading “An Instructor’s Guide To Finding Work-Life Balance”
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 …
Karen Smith is the BIOL 112 Coordinator for the Biology program and a Lecturer in the Dept. of Microbiology & Immunology. She is also the Faculty Lead for the Student Diversity Initiative in Science and a Faculty Fellow for the first year orientation programs, Imagine, Jump Start and Collegia. Karen is the recipient of the …
Two-stage collaborative exams have been shown to improve student test grade performance, but do they improve retention of course material? This month’s interesting read features a study conducted in an introductory biology course at UBC in which researchers measured student retention of course content at different time points following a two-stage collaborative exam. They found …
What teaching practices most effectively promote student learning in UBC undergraduate biology courses? This month’s interesting read describes a large-scale study conducted at UBC in which researchers observed classroom practices and assessed student learning in 31 biology courses (involving more than 3,700 students!). They found that group work was “the most significant positive predictor of learning gains”, particularly when it included …
By Christine Goedhart There are a variety of reasons why students don’t reach out for help when they are struggling. Sometimes students are in denial and don’t realize they are struggling, or they mistakenly think that they can figure it out on their own. Some students feel too ashamed or embarrassed to ask for help, …
Stella Lee is a Sessional Lecturer in the Department of Zoology. She has a B.Sc. (Animal Biology) and M.Sc. (Zoology) from the University of British Columbia and a Ph.D. in Experimental and Molecular Medicine from Dartmouth. Following her one-year postdoctoral fellowship at Tufts University, she returned to UBC in 2017 for her current teaching position. …
Evan was born in the San Francisco Bay Area, and majored in Biology and Environmental studies at University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC). He first fell in love with plants during his last two years at UCSC, where he was inspired by some truly amazing professors in his Plant Ecology and Agroecology courses. Chasing his …
Professor Samuels has a B.Sc. in Neurobiology from McGill University in Montreal, and a Ph.D. in Botany, from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC., Canada. She did post-doctoral studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA and at UBC Vancouver, where she has been a faculty member since 2000. Research in the Samuels …
By Christine Goedhart To gain a better understanding of the experiences and needs of our students, we recently interviewed a number of UBC students who had completed biology courses. In their responses to the interview questions, these students generously shared many things that instructors could do to improve the experiences of students in their courses. …
Continue reading “The #1 Thing Your Students Want You To Do”
Rhea Storlund is a PhD student in the Marine Mammal Research Unit supervised by Dr. Andrew Trites and Dr. Dave Rosen. Her research interests lie in understanding how the circulatory systems of marine mammals contribute to their impressive diving abilities. To this end, she investigates cardiovascular adjustments in Steller sea lions and the structure and …
“I never thought that I’d enjoy TAing and never expected to want to teach as a career, but TAing as much as I have has shown me how much fun and how rewarding it can be.” Katelyn Janzen earned her undergraduate degree in Cellular and Molecular Genetics at the University of the Fraser Valley, …
By Christine Goedhart First impressions are powerful, and the thoughts, feelings and expectations that students form about your course during the first day will follow them throughout the term. Here are five things that you can do on the first day of class to set the right tone and get your students excited, engaged, and …
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Brett Couch is a Senior Instructor in the departments of Botany and Zoology. He has taught and developed the lab component of BIOL203. He also serves as the chair of the Botany Local Safety Team and is a member of the Faculty of Science Joint Occupational Health and Safety Committee. In addition to teaching, …