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 is here – scwrl.ubc.ca/wac – and the videos are also great.
– Karen Smith has some really interesting data from around supporting student wellness. This is timely, important, and fantastic. She also has a pack of resources to share, if you’re interested in incorporating wellness pieces within your course.
– Geoff Wasteneys’ 4th year course incorporating authentic research experience is awesome, and would make a great model for all kinds of other lab courses, even outside biology. Awesome!
– Kathy Nomme spoke about the process for TA assignments to courses – making it more efficient and information-rich for both the TAs and the instructors. Looking forward to seeing how this progresses – thanks Kathy!
Here are the slides from my short talk on our classroom observational study: 2015 Teaching Retreat slides. We’ve collected the full dataset so far, and have started analysis. Look at the interesting spread of teaching across our program!
Much more analysis to follow – thanks for the fantastic questions and discussion.
Thanks also to Shona and Rachel for organizing today!