Life Sciences Teaching and Learning: : Page 2

STLF Field notes: Using student responses as clicker options, on the fly

By Megan Barker on February 26, 2015

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 are generated by students themselves – and we’ve seen this put into practice on the fly for clicker questions.

STLF Field Notes:

In Biology 200, Liane Chen does an awesome job at this practice. Student writing is a central element of the course, and so she gives them opportunities to practice their writing in class (which, in and of itself, is fantastic). As a short activity, Liane prompts students with a question and asks them to write down their responses (1-2 sentences). She keeps them accountable by letting the class know that she’ll be using their work for the clicker question. While students are working, she collects a few examples of their writing, and types them verbatim into a powerpoint slide.

Bringing the group back together, these examples become the clicker options, which the students then discuss and evaluate. Sometimes there is a clear best answer, sometimes there are multiple best answers, and sometimes each answer can be improved upon. By facilitating the subsequent discussion, Liane helps the students develop critical evaluation skills, improve their own writing, and see the connection between in-class work and tests. And the students themselves recognize the value – she has received positive feedback on her final evaluations about this practice as well. Awesome!

Beyond writing: other formats of student-generated work as clicker options

An example of student-generated graphs as clicker options. Following a question prompt, the instructor moved through the room, saw what students were drawing, and drew four of their answers (orange lines) on the printout (shown on the document camera). Instant clicker options, followed up by great discussion!

This approach is not limited to student writing. It also works with lots of other kinds of student work, such as diagrams and graphs using the document camera.

For example, you can have students draw graphs that make predictions about the results of a particular experiment. As they are drawing, you can walk around the room, and see the examples being drawn. (An example from Biology 112 is shown at right.) Making sure that one of the answers is correct, draw these graphs on the document camera, and have the students vote. From prior teaching, if you happen to know some popular misconceptions, you can spike those in as well. Either way, the options are authentic, the distractors tend to be quite compelling, and the ensuing discussion is powerful.

Other benefits to course alignment, assessment, and instructor prep time

Want to take it up a level, and further align your course material with the assessments? Some of the student-generated ideas in this type of class discussion can make great distractors for actual test questions. And when the students know that you’ll be doing this, it helps the instructor gain students buy-in to the classroom activities as well.

Using student answers to make clicker distractors on the fly is a fantastic approach that can foster great classroom discussion, and provides a chance for instructors to target authentic student struggles with the course material. Additionally, from a practical perspective, because you don’t have to come up with plausible distractors, it often takes less time to prepare these questions than more traditional clickers. Double win!

Have you tried this approach in your own courses? Can you think of other examples where this strategy might work? We’d love to hear your ideas about this and other classroom practices that you’ve observed in your own ‘field’ studies.

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Introducing a series…

By Megan Barker on February 26, 2015

STLF Field Notes

– Or –

How to Hack Your Classroom

As Science Teaching and Learning Fellows (STLFs) in biology, the classroom is our ‘field’ – we venture out into the wild, attending many classes to see teaching and learning taking place. We are extremely lucky to have this opportunity – there are so many different ways to be a great instructor, and we get to see this in action!

To share some of what we’ve noticed, this series will highlight examples of great instruction that we’ve seen right here at UBC. We’ll focus mostly on quick tricks that are easy to test out yourself – maybe some of these ideas will resonate with you, and inspire you to try them.

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What’s going on in there? How to find out what really happens in your classroom.

By Natalie Schimpf on January 19, 2015

Have you ever wondered what you look like to the audience while giving a presentation? You know how you are feeling and what you think you are doing, but is it the same as what others perceive? The same kind of question can be asked of teaching: while teaching, am I actually doing what I think I am doing? In this post we discuss how you can objectively characterize your classroom practice.

The effects of being in the spotlight can influence our perceptions of classroom practice. (Image: Wikipedia)

The emotional impact of being in front of an audience can sometimes skew our sense of perception. For example, an acceptable pause to wait for student questions can feel like an uncomfortable eternity when standing up at the front (complete with chirping crickets). The importance of silence is often underestimated, especially when posing questions in class. How long do you wait for a student response? How long do you wait when you ask whether anyone has any questions? Our answer to this is often ‘forever!’ Frequently, however, even though we wait for what seems like an adequate period of time, students are still formulating their responses or working up the courage to speak up during class. Usually a pause that, in reality, is only a couple of seconds (the apparent eternity to us) is far too short for students to respond, leaving them with the impression that we rush on, and us with the impression that the students are reluctant to talk.

How can you find out what’s really happening in your classroom?

You can find out about your teaching by having your practices observed using the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (Science, technology, engineering and mathematics), or COPUS (Smith et al, 2013). COPUS is a validated protocol that allows a trained observer to objectively characterize classroom activity. Every two minutes, the observer notes down different activities occurring in class at that moment, both what the students are doing and what the instructor is doing. Observations can also incorporate a measure of student engagement (e.g. what fraction of students observed are obviously engaged in the class versus obviously disengaged).

What can COPUS data tell us? COPUS observations take an objective a snapshot of how much class time is allocated to different activities. Useful charts, such as those below, allow us to see how much of our class time is spent on a particular activity, as well as how the different tasks are distributed throughout the lesson. COPUS data can facilitate awareness of classroom practices and can help to inform (as well as document) changes that occur in these practices. For example, you may be trying to add more active learning to your class (as recently discussed here ). COPUS data can help you measure the changes you are making and provide an opportunity for feedback on your practice. This kind of data could also be included in tenure portfolios to demonstrate deliberate practice.

COPUS data for two classes demonstrating varying degrees of active classroom practice.

Interested in having your class observed? We would be happy to visit your class and provide a COPUS observation, and follow-up with a discussion about the observation. Observations can be all-encompassing (what does my classroom look like?) or tailored to focus on a particular aspect of teaching (e.g. how much time do I spend providing feedback after a group activity?). Observations can be a one-off event, or can track practice over time with multiple observations. For example, you may be planning to implement a new teaching strategy and wish to document your progress. Whatever the case, please feel free to contact us for assistance.

What have we been doing in your classrooms?

This academic year, the Life Science Teaching and Learning Fellows (LS-STLFs) are conducting research into the culture of classroom practice at UBC. So far, in the fall term, we have carried out a week’s worth of COPUS observations across 9 courses with the aim of characterising what undergraduate classrooms look like here in UBC Biology. Observations will continue in more courses over the winter term. We are administering pre- and post course diagnostic surveys and hope to make some general conclusions regarding classroom activity and student learning.

References:

Smith, M. K., Jones, F. H. M., Gilbert, S. L. & Wieman, C. E. (2013). The Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS): A new instrument to characterize university STEM classroom practices. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 12 (4), 618-627.

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Save class time with a more efficient review strategy: two-stage review activity

By Lisa McDonnell on December 18, 2014

Review can be a necessary part of almost any course. We expect (hope) students will bring some prior knowledge into our courses, but there are no guarantees. We all forget things, and it can be even harder to trigger prior knowledge in a new context. So, we often use class time to review required material. A problem with traditional review sessions is that students will tune out: they recognize some of the review material being shown, so they think they know this stuff, and so students are unlikely to walk away with an improved understanding of the review material. Here we describe an easy and effective way to engage students in review: the two-stage review activity. A few of us in biology have tried this review method, and have had great success.

Why: Review often takes up a significant amount of class time, but does not always deliver the desired results (i.e., “we reviewed this, why don’t they know it?”).

What: The two-stage review activity uses individual testing followed by collaborative testing. Two-stage (or collaborative) exams are becoming more common in classes here at UBC and elsewhere. One of the major benefits of two-stage exams is immediate feedback. There is good research out there on the benefits of two-stage exams, one example is found here.

How: Students complete a test individually (e.g. 5 to 20 questions, depending on the extent of review needed). The questions are testing content they should know from the pre-requisite course(s), and are generally multiple choice. After completing the individually-written test, students get into groups and re-write the same exam. They get immediate feedback for each question about whether or not their group is correct using IF-AT Scratch Cards.

“IF-AT forms are multiple-choice answer sheets with a top layer of scratch-away material, similar to a scratch lottery ticket. For each question, the student group scratches away the top layer of their chosen answer (A-E). If their answer is correct, the revealed area will contain a star. If no star is visible, the group continues to try until they scratch off the correct answer.” (Maxwell et al., 2014). We often ask groups to award themselves points based on how many scratches they make before identifying the correct answer. This provides added incentive to deeply discuss the question before their first scratch.

A review session like this can take anywhere from 15-50 minutes, and can be done in class or in tutorials. The individually-written test can also be done online, before class – reducing the in-class time to only the group component.

Want to try this, but need some help finding questions or finding scratch cards? Get in touch, we can help!

Results from using a two-stage review activity in a biology class:

Students are very engaged in the review. Their discussions were energetic and on-topic.
Students got immediate feedback and were able to clarify a lot of their misunderstandings through group discussion.
We have saved three 50-minute class periods by doing this review. Typically we would spend almost 4 classes covering a topic that was also covered in the first year course. After the two-stage review we cut it down to 1 class. After the review activity, students were provided with practice problems to do as they see fit (in their own time). We cut out the in-class review, and only focused class-time on the most challenging parts of the topic. Despite dramatically reducing in-class time spent on this topic, student performance on the topic was not negatively impacted based on performance on the conceptual diagnostic test (see Figure 1). This allowed us to use the saved classes to cover new, more challenging material.

time spent for Dec 2014 post Figure 1. Reducing the amount of in-class time spent on mitosis and meiosis does not negatively impact student performance. The 3.5 classes session received in-class, “traditional” review. In comparison, the 1 class session received the two-stage review activity and extra-curricular practice problems. Mean normalized change represents the change in score from the pre-test (before teaching mitosis/meiosis) to the post-test (after teaching). Error bars are standard error of the mean. The means are not significantly different (p>0.05,t-test).

More than 70% of students reported taking action to correct misunderstandings revealed by the review activity, by studying old notes, reviewing old midterms) after the two-stage review experience! Over 25% of students took another test voluntarily, online, after the review activity to re-test their understanding of the review material.

As an instructor, I also got feedback. Looking at the individual versus group scores (Figure 2), I could identify the review material that students still struggled with, even after the collaborative group test. In other words, I could focus precious in-class time and avoid reviewing everything.

Figure 2. Individual and group performance on the two-stage review test questions.

We highly recommend the two-stage review activity as an effective, and efficient, way to engage students in review. Improved understanding, saving class time, and promoting students to be self-directed learners!

If you want to talk more with us about running such an activity, please get in touch!

You can also see Dr. Jane Maxwell summary of her experience in a 300 level Chemistry class here and soon you can read more about the two-stage review in the Journal of College Science Teaching.

Maxwell, J.E., McDonnell, L.M., Wieman, C. 2014. An Improved Design for In-Class Review. Journal of College Science Teaching. Accepted.

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Why use active learning in your class?

By Lisa McDonnell on November 15, 2014

Many educational institutions are working towards incorporating more active learning and less traditional, lecture-based teaching methods in STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) classrooms. Some may wonder “is active learning really better than lecturing?” Yes! Research in science education clearly indicates that active learning is better.

Continue reading to find out more.

Traditional Lecturing (left, image from Wikimedia) and Active Learning (right, image from EOAS CWSEI)

In this post we review an important meta-analysis on active learning in STEM published this year in PNAS, which concludes that when compared to lecture-based teaching, active learning is far more effective at promoting learning as measured by increased performance on exams, and reducing failure rates. A short summary and commentary of the paper by Dr. Carl Wieman can be found here. The authors began with 642 published studies from STEM education research, and after applying stringent criteria such as controlling for student equivalence, instructor equivalence, and exam equivalence, they looked at 225 studies to evaluate the effect of active learning on test scores and failure rates compared to lecture-based classes. The differences between lecturing and active learning are compelling:

Active learning improves test scores by half a standard deviation: an effect size of 0.47.

Active learning decreases average failure rates across STEM courses from 34% to 21%.

Freeman and his co-authors put some of these effects into context. For example, an effect size greater than 0.20 in K-12 education literature would be considered a driver for policy change. In the medical field, such a difference between the control and treatment group would make it unethical to deny the control group the treatment. Even more stunning, is the estimation that, by reducing failure rates, active learning in STEM can save students $3.5 million (US) in tuition dollars. We need to question if lecture-based teaching is knowingly disadvantaging a large number of students that have been admitted into the University.

“in undergraduate STEM education, we have the curious situation that, although more effective teaching methods have been overwhelmingly demonstrated, most STEM courses are still taught by lectures—the pedagogical equivalent of bloodletting” (Wieman, 2014)

We suggest that using active learning in our STEM classes will result in:

– More students learning more science (technology, engineering, and math)!

– More scientifically informed citizens leaving our programs

– More people entering STEM careers

So, we no longer need to wonder if active learning really is better than lecturing. It is! If our active learning methods are based on evidence-based best practices, we can safely assume that active learning is better than lecturing. Is this the end of lecturing as the primary mode of teaching? Will active learning become the new “traditional” approach? Do you want to talk more about active learning in your class? Contact us!

More information on evidence-based best practices: Instructor guidance, what all instructors should know, videos about active learning, how people learn, what not to do

What does this mean for education research? There is no longer a need to compare active to traditional, but rather active vs. active. It is now more important to investigate what types of active learning approaches are the most effective to address questions like: What is the best balance between information transfer and active learning in the classroom? How do different active learning approaches impact different types of students?

What are we doing in Biology? Many STEM instructors and post-docs at UBC are (and have been for a long time!) teaching and researching the effectiveness of active learning in their classes. UBC provides an incredible, supportive community and context for science education research and implementing evidence-based active learning practices in classes. Here is a brief summary of some of the research we are doing in UBC Biology as part of the Life Science – Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative:

Targeted pre-class readings: they do the reading and are prepared for class
Two-stage review activity (here and here): save class time and make review effective
Two-stage exams improves student learning: improved retention
Effects of in-class deliberate practice on written explanations
Creating effective clicker questions
Concepts-first, jargon-second improves learning
Improving student problem solving in genetics
Factual and conceptual genetics knowledge retention from 1^st to 4^th year
The impact of active learning on long-term retention
Large scale documentation of teaching practices from 1^st to 4^th year using COPUS (Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM).

References:

Freeman et al. 2014. Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. PNAS, 111(23).

Wieman, CE. 2014. Large-scale comparison of science teaching methods sends clear message. PNAS, 111(23).

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Helping students reflect on their midterm performance, not just their grade

By LS-CWSEI on March 20, 2014

Can peer discussion and self-reflection turn a midterm exam into a learning experience for undergraduate biology students?

Instructors of a second-year genetics course in the UBC Biology Program recently tried a new activity designed to help students reflect on their midterm performance. In the days immediately following the midterm, students first rewrote the midterm in groups, then each student reflected on the quality of the group’s answers compared to their own in order to identify their own successes and failures—all before receiving a grade. In this post, we want to share how the activities were implemented, what the students reported as helpful and unhelpful to their learning, and what the instructors would do differently next time.

How the midterm re-write and reflection activity was implemented:

Students wrote the midterm individually, in class, on a Monday.
Students re-wrote the midterm in groups during their tutorial session that same week (course has a mandatory one-hour weekly tutorial). Once complete, they were given an answer key and asked to go through their answers together and figure out where they went wrong.
After that (still during tutorial), each student completed an individual reflection worksheet about what they learned from re-writing and discussing the midterm with their group.
The re-write and reflection activities were not worth any marks.

The instructor’s goals and rationale for the activity:

We wanted students to learn from the midterm (and not just be evaluated by it) by working through the questions in groups, but there simply wasn’t time to run our typical two-stage group exam in class.
Tutorials that run the same week as a midterm don’t include new material, so we thought it was a good opportunity to convert the group portion of the midterm to an in-tutorial exercise.
We wanted students to identify—for themselves—their successes and mistakes on the midterm and reflect on their own performance before receiving a grade. We hoped this would help students see the connection between their study-habits, their approach when answering questions and the quality of their answers, and their grade.

Results: What types of comments did students make during the midterm reflection activity?

A large number of students made comments to the effect that the group re-write and reflection activity gave them a new perspective on their approach to solving some of the problems, or identified gaps in their understanding. Here is a summary of analysis of a random sample of student reflections:

70% articulated a new approach to solving a problem, including methods to check their answers are correct
27% commented on needing to pay closer attention to the information in the question, and using all the information given
27% recognized a need to improve their understanding of a concept, or explore combining concepts within one question
50% commented on the fact that some questions could have multiple answers, and it might be necessary to compare options and decide which one is best

What did the students think of the midterm re-write and reflection activities?

Students were later asked for feedback about the activity during the Mid-Course Survey, an unofficial survey of students’ attitudes towards various aspects of the course. On a multiple-choice question asking if the midterm re-write and reflection activity was helpful for their learning:

50% of students reported it was helpful.
28% were neutral.
22% reported it was unhelpful.

On an open-ended survey question asking what, if anything, was helpful about the activity, students reported that they liked:

Discussing how to solve problems with others.
Figuring out what they did wrong.
Learning how to solve things in a different way.
Getting feedback so quickly.
Learning from peers.
Discussing was more beneficial than just seeing the answer key.
Interesting to see other perspectives.
Helped clarify my understanding.

On another question asked students what, if anything, they did not like about the activity, students reported that:

completing the activity on the same day as the midterm was exhausting [for students whose tutorial was the same day as the midterm].
it was stressful to find out during the re-write which questions they got wrong on the midterm.
it was frustrating that they couldn’t take home the re-write and answer key right away. [answer key was posted online at a later date].
they wished that the midterm re-write counted for marks.
re-writing the midterm would be more useful if it happened after the midterm scores were announced.

What did the instructors think of the midterm re-write and reflection activities?

The instructors thought both activities worked well overall but ultimately suffered because neither was worth any marks. During a typical two-stage exam the group portion is worth a substantial fraction of a student’s overall mark and it is rare to see a student disengaged; in this case, during the midterm re-write more than a few students were seen to be disengaged and not contributing to their group’s discussions. In future, the instructors would assign some marks to the group re-write activity in order to encourage students to take it seriously.

As for reflection, the instructors wanted students to reflect on their own performance before receiving a grade, i.e., to see beyond their numeric score to the connection between their study-habits, approach to answering questions and the quality of their answers. However, only half of the students reported the midterm re-write and reflection to be useful for their learning and several reported wanting to know their midterm score before the re-write. To alleviate this issue, in future the instructors would like to include at least one new isomorphic question with the reflection activity that would be worth points and contribute to a student’s original midterm score. The purpose of the isomorphic question would be 1) to show students the value of the reflection activity in terms of tangible marks and 2) more immediately connect students’ study and test-taking habits, just reflected upon, with their performance on a similar question. Alternatively, the instructors may try an exam-analysis activity (Williams et al, 2011).

If you’re an instructor, do you incorporate any kind of self-reflection activity into your tests? Any successes to share or pitfalls to avoid? If you’re a student, have any of your classes ever included a reflection activity? Do you ever reflect on your own habits and how they affect your performance during a test?

Cited reference:

William, A. E., Aguilar-Roca, N. M., Tsai, M., Wong, M., Beaupré, M. M., & O’Dowd, D. K. (2011). Assessment of learning gains associated with independent exam analysis in introductory biology. CBE life sciences education, 10(4), 346–56.

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Introducing the new LS-CWSEI blog

By bclarkst on February 11, 2014

Sharing the progress, reflections and teaching resources of the Life Sciences-Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at UBC Biology

Welcome to our new blog and website! We are the Science Teaching and Learning Fellows (STLFs) of the LS-CWSEI; in addition to acronyms, we love working with UBC Biology faculty to develop and apply evidence-based best teaching practices in their classrooms. You can see our smiling faces here.

Our goal for the blog is to highlight progress and reflections from our work with the UBC Biology Program, as well as share teaching activities, literature and other resources. We plan to post at least two short articles a month. Today’s post gives a (very) brief summary of the roles and goals of an STLF and some of the specific projects we’ve pursued recently.

Roles and goals of a Science Teaching and Learning Fellow

Our job is to work directly with faculty to apply a scientific approach to teaching. We are post-doctoral fellows whose graduate work was in biology, but we also have university-level teaching experience and experience in science education methodology and research (CWSEI STLF training protocol here). We work directly with faculty and teaching teams (including course teaching assistants) to establish their goals for a given course and a concrete plan to achieve those goals, including how to:

Establish what students are expected to learn in the course
Measure what students are actually learning and taking away from class
Adapt instructional methods and confirm they achieve the instructor’s desired learning goals

Currently, we are each assigned to a core course (100- and 200-level, some 300-level) in the UBC Biology Program and work primarily with its teaching team. However, we can and do work with any other interested faculty and also consult on department-wide curriculum reform. You can find out more general information about the LS-CWSEI here.

A summary of some recent work with courses in the Biology Program

1. Establish what students are expected to learn in a given course

Develop or revise testable learning goals, at whatever level needed (lecture, topic, course, etc.)
- Implemented in BIOL 112: Biology of the Cell, BIOL 121: Genetics, Evolution, Ecology, BIOL 204: Vertebrate Structure and Function, BIOL 205: Comparative Invertebrate Zoology, BIOL 209: Non-Vascular Plants, BIOL 210: Vascular Plants, BIOL230: Fundamentals of Ecology, BIOL 234: Fundamentals of Genetics, BIOL 260: Fundamentals of Physiology, BIOL 336: Fundamentals of Evolution. Courses calendar here.

Align learning goals to course assessments (tests, projects, assignments, etc.)
- BIOL 112, 121, 204, 205, 209, 210, 230, 234, 260, 336
- Find CWSEI papers, examples and other resources on learning goals here.

2: Determine what students are actually learning and taking away from class

Provide quantitative observations of teaching and student behaviour during class to the instructor.
- BIOL 112, 121, 204, 205, 230, 234, 209, 210, 260, 336, 455: Comparative Neurobiology
- See the CWSEI Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate Stem courses (COPUS) protocol here.

Develop and deploy pre-/post-instruction learning assessments such as a Concept Inventory
- BIOL 112, 121, 230, 336
- See the UBC Q4B (Questions For Biology), a concept inventory development team, here.

Create resources to teach and assess student problem solving skills
- BIOL 234
- See STLF Lisa McDonnell’s poster and blog post on this project.

Create resources to teach and assess students’ logical thinking and reasoning skills
- BIOL 204, 260

3: Adapt instructional methods and confirm they achieve desired learning goals

Create or adapt course materials for “clickers” (student personal response system) in order to foster peer-to-peer instruction, generate predictions, assess how well a concept was learned, collect student feedback, etc.
- BIOL 112, 121, 204, 205, 230, 234, 209, 210, 260, 336, 455
- Find CWSEI clicker info and resources here.

Motivate more students to do their readings by converting traditionally large, chapter-long assignments to shorter “pre-readings” specific to the upcoming class or week, assessed by an short online quiz.
- BIOL 112, 121, 205, 234, 260, 336
- See the CWSEI pre-reading guide here.
- See former STLF Mandy Banet’s poster on pre-readings here.

Convert class content traditionally taught as lecture to in-class worksheets in order to give students practice grappling with course concepts, skills and exam-style questions and the opportunity to receive formative feedback from their instructor or TA.
- BIOL 112, 121, 230, 234, 260, 336
- See the EOS-SEI (Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences equivalent of the LS-CWSEI) article on designing in-class group-based worksheets here.

Develop and implement “two-stage group exams”, a form of collaborative testing in which students write the first part of a test individually and then complete the same or similar questions with in a group.
- BIOL 112, 121, 230, 234, 260
- See the CWSEI group exam paper pdf (Gilley and Clarkston, 2014, J. College Science Teaching, 43: 83–91).
- See the CWSEI two-stage exam videos here.

Provide Teaching Assistants training in Pedagogical-Content Knowledge—how to teach a given topic, the likely student preconceptions, misconceptions and how to address them—as well as teaching feedback.
- BIOL 112, 121, 234, 336
- See the CWSEI TA training resources here.

What’s next for the LS-CWSEI blog?

In our next (and in many subsequent) posts, we’ll focus on a single course and delve into the details of a specific project. Stay tuned!

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Helping students reflect on their midterm performance, not just their grade

STLF Field notes: Using student responses as clicker options, on the fly

STLF Field Notes:

Beyond writing: other formats of student-generated work as clicker options

Other benefits to course alignment, assessment, and instructor prep time

Introducing a series…

STLF Field Notes

How to Hack Your Classroom

What’s going on in there? How to find out what really happens in your classroom.

Save class time with a more efficient review strategy: two-stage review activity

Why use active learning in your class?

Helping students reflect on their midterm performance, not just their grade

Can peer discussion and self-reflection turn a midterm exam into a learning experience for undergraduate biology students?

Results: What types of comments did students make during the midterm reflection activity?

What did the students think of the midterm re-write and reflection activities?

What did the instructors think of the midterm re-write and reflection activities?

Introducing the new LS-CWSEI blog

Sharing the progress, reflections and teaching resources of the Life Sciences-Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at UBC Biology

Roles and goals of a Science Teaching and Learning Fellow

A summary of some recent work with courses in the Biology Program

1. Establish what students are expected to learn in a given course

2: Determine what students are actually learning and taking away from class

3: Adapt instructional methods and confirm they achieve desired learning goals

What’s next for the LS-CWSEI blog?

The LS-CWSEI work with Life Sciences faculty to establish:

Our goal: