Our jargon paper is out!
Hurrah! This is exciting news: Here’s the link to the article, published in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education (BAMBEdu): Concepts First, Jargon Second – McDonnell, Barker, Wieman (If you don’t have journal access to BAMBEdu, then here is the pre-peer-reviewed version of the article: McDonnell Barker Wieman Jargon – pre-peer-review)
Peer Instruction & Active Learning Workshops at Shasta College
We (Megan Barker and Lisa McDonnell) have just wrapped our workshops at Shasta College in Redding, California. We had a great time – the groups participating in the workshop were very enthusiastic and inquisitive. We had very effective discussions and were super-energized by everyone’s enthusiasm! We facilitated four workshops – here are the titles and […]
UBC Biology Program Retreat was today!
Today was the 3rd annual UBC Biology Program retreat! Thanks to all the other speakers. Here’s a few personal hilights: – I particularly enjoyed Shannon O’Bradovich’s talk on behalf of WAC (Writing Across the Curriculum). I’ll definitely be looking into their resources – including some upcoming workshops on efficient grading to improve student writing. Website […]
Active learning presentations, continued: NWBIO plenary by Trish Schulte
NWBIO (the Northwest Biology Instructors’ Organization) is an annual conference held in the Pacific Northwest, attended and facilitated by instructors from regional universities and colleges. The 2015 conference took place just last weekend, and the schedule included a fantastic blend of new ideas, applied workshops, and great discussion (NWBIO website here). The plenary talk, given […]
Is more activity always better? Poster presentation at the Science Education Open House
We’ve been visiting lots of classrooms this year, to see what’s going on in biology teaching, and to try to make connections between classroom practices and student learning. The data so far are pretty interesting, and we (Megan & Lisa, on behalf of the whole LS-STLF team) presented our preliminary results at the Science Education […]
Hack Your Classroom: Quick grade entry with Remark frees up time and gets you more data
Marking homework and exams is a huge time sink for any course. Then comes the dreaded task of entering the grades. Dozens of hours of your time, or TA time, can be spent each term entering grades. Looking to dramatically reduce the number of hours spent entering grades? Consider trying Remark. This scanning technology is useful […]
STLF Field notes: Using student responses as clicker options, on the fly
Writing good multiple choice questions can be tricky and time-consuming, especially coming up with incorrect options (distractors) that are not trivial. These distractors need to be tempting enough to get students to really think about the question and engage in meaningful discussion. In developing multiple choice questions, one good approach is to use distractors that […]