Connecting you to what's happening in the UBC Biology Program
Do you feel like you spend too much time grading? Do you want grading to better serve you and your students? This month’s Interesting Read provides a brief history of grading in higher education, describes different purposes of grading, and offers some ways to approach grading so that you can teach more by grading less …
Continue reading “Teaching more by grading less (or differently)”
Scientist Spotlights have previously been shown to increase students’ relatability to and perception of scientists and enhance student science identity. This month’s Interesting Read makes the case for engaging students in the creation of Scientist Spotlights to leverage students’ authentic perspectives and unique cultural assets and increase the likelihood that the Scientist Spotlights produced will …
Continue reading “The Case for Student-Authored Scientist Spotlights”
Looking for ways to help students develop teamwork skills in your course? This month’s Interesting Read offers suggestions for designing group work projects to help students learn how to operate effectively in a group. Citation: Halonen, J.S. & Dunn, D.S. (2021). Why and How to Teach Teamwork. Chronicle of Higher Education, November 15. https://www-chronicle-com.eu1.proxy.openathens.net/article/why-and-how-to-teach-teamwork You …
Biology both impacts and is impacted by society, but is commonly taught in a “value free” way that separates science from societal issues. In this month’s Interesting Read, the authors describe how they linked biological concepts to societal issues through the teaching of ideological awareness in an introductory biology course. While students who experienced the …
Do you want your students to “pay attention” in class? This month’s Interesting Read presents an evidence-based framework for understanding attention in the classroom and offers ways that instructors can design teaching strategies to better guide students’ attention, leading to improved learning. Citation: Keller, A.S., Davidesco, I., & Tanner, K.D. (2020). Attention Matters: How Orchestrating …
Continue reading “Attention Matters: How Orchestrating Attention May Relate to Classroom Learning”
Talking about access needs creates a more inclusive space and ensures that all individuals have access to a given learning environment. This month’s Interesting Read introduces the concept of ‘access talk’ and provides concrete strategies that STEM educators can use to normalize the use of access needs, improving accessibility and disrupting ableism in academic spaces. …
Continue reading “Access Needs: Centering Students and Disrupting Ableist Norms in STEM”
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. This month’s Interesting Read is a practical advice guide that offers key principles, implementation strategies, and resources to help you make the first day as effective as possible. Citation: …
Are you looking for ways to make your teaching more inclusive? This month’s Interesting Read is a practical advice guide that offers key principles, implementation strategies, and resources for inclusive teaching and course design. You can also find UBC-specific tips and resources for inclusive teaching at the new Inclusive Teaching Resources for UBC Science Instructors …
Students are reporting high levels of stress and anxiety, which can affect their motivation, academic performance and quality of life. This month’s interesting read provides evidence-based strategies instructors can use to lower student stress and anxiety, while also building an inclusive, equitable, and empowering classroom environment. Hsu, J.L., Goldsmith, G.R. (2021). Instructor Strategies to Alleviate …
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Students with disabilities often have an extra barrier of having to self-advocate to access the accommodations they are entitled to, leading to feelings of exclusion and reduced success and retention. This month’s Interesting Read provides practical actions that STEM instructors can take to support the self-advocacy of students with disabilities, encouraging their use of accommodations …
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The utility of the “share” component in the popular Think-Pair-Share active learning strategy is explored in this month’s Interesting Read. In their consideration, the authors first identify and challenge common assumptions underlying its use, using evidence and recent research. They then offer modifications and alternatives to the share that help to promote equity and inclusion, …
Continue reading “Reconsidering the Share of a Think–Pair–Share”
Are you looking for ways to promote metacognition into your course? This month’s Interesting Read provides a repository of questions focused on the three main components of metacognition (planning, monitoring, and evaluating), and offers implementation strategies and recommendations for building a class culture grounded in metacognition. Citation: Tanner, K.D. (2012). Promoting student metacognition. CBE – …
This month’s Interesting Read examines active learning through an accessibility lens and offers recommendations for making active-learning science classes more inclusive for students with disabilities. While the article is framed in the context of in-person courses, most of the recommendations are applicable to the remote teaching environment. Citation: Gin, L.E., Guerrero, F.A., Cooper, K.M., & …
Are you looking for ways to make your teaching of genetics more inclusive, comprehensive, and precise? This month’s Interesting Read offers biology instructors approaches and language choices to foster inclusion of gender identity, disability, and race/ethnicity when discussing genetics-related topics. Recommendations include ways to represent gender and reproductive diversity in pedigree charts, terminology to separate …
Members of the LGBTQ+ community face unique challenges in academic biology settings. This month’s Interesting Read features an article that describes 14 literature-based recommendations for biologists to be more inclusive of LGBTQ+ individuals. Recommendations include practical tips for implementation and are organized into the following categories: 1) Be thoughtful about the language used regarding the …
Scientist Spotlight assignments feature the life and work of diverse scientists and can be used to integrate inclusion and diversity into your course, while also covering content and scientific process (see an example here). In 2016, Schinske et al. found that Scientist Spotlight assignments can shift students’ perceptions of the types of people who do …
Implementing active learning pedagogies online tends to take longer than it did in person, so you may want to consider decreasing or reorganizing your course content to preserve your ability to use learner-centred activities when teaching remotely this fall. The authors of this month’s Interesting read offer three evidence-based strategies to help guide instructors as …
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 …
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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We asked some Biology instructors about their experiences delivering midterm exams online, and here are their tools and methods, and what worked and what didn’t. Hear from Darren Irwin (BIOL 300), Trish Schulte (BIOL 260), Jackie Dee and Karen Smith (BIOL 112), Mary O’Connor (BIOL 306), Laura Parfrey (BIOL 230), and Kyra Janot (BIOL 320) …
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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”
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 …
Continue reading “Understanding the Role of Teaching Practices in Student Well-being”
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. …
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 …