Summary Slides From Final
Plenary Session
AAAS Conference on
Transforming Undergraduate
Biology Education
July 17, 2009
Washington DC
Student Perceptions
What are the most important things in your development
as a life scientist (or other professional goal)?
Critical Thinking Skills: How to select/identify relevant issues and apply the
fundamentals of the scientific method to real-life situations. “Having a broad
base of knowledge without knowing how to apply it doesn’t go very far.”
Research experiences and/or designing your own experiments: Engaging in
some level of research experiences is important for all students to build
critical skills and explore their interest in science.
Analytical Skills: All students should have an understanding of how to
analyze data, interpret findings, and use statistics appropriately.
Communication Skills: Strong communication skills, including both writing
skills and public speaking skills, are critical. Students should be able to
communicate science to both scientists and non-scientists. “It doesn’t
matter what you know if you can’t express it to someone else, either in your
field or someone who isn’t familiar with it at all.”
What excites you most in a learning environment?
•Being challenged
•Two-way conversations between faculty and students
•Tie what I’m learning into the Big Picture:
•Why is this important?
•Where did this come from? (original literature)
•Where does this fit into real life?
•How does this relate to things I’m learning in other classes?
•Analogies, NOT Jargon
•Getting to apply what you learned
What excites you LEAST in a learning environment?
Professors who…
•Use bad PowerPoints
•Give lectures in a monotone voice or use jargon/unknown terms to explain
something
•Give endless lists (“This leads to this leads to this…”)
• Give you lists of facts without connecting them
•Don’t respond, put you off, or are inaccessible
•Are clearly not into teaching
•Use small group discussions as an excuse not to teach anything
•Don’t communicate clearly (language, style, writing)
•Don’t give exams back, give exams back late, give no explanation of what the
right answer was, or re-use tests that don’t relate to what was done in class
•Teach the same course number as another colleague but with entirely different
requirements
•Use assignments that have already been disseminated on the Internet.
Fellow students who…
•Allow cut-throat competition to take away from learning (emphasis on grades)
Group 1
Overarching and Unifying Key
Concepts and Competencies
Overarching and unifying key concepts
and competencies (blue dots!)
•
•
•
•
•
Concepts
Evolution dynamics
Energy and matter
Structure and Function
Information – flow,
exchange, storage
Systems – control and
feedback at all levels of
organization
•
•
•
•
•
Competencies
Process and nature of
science
Interdisciplinarity
Communication and
Collaboration
Quantitative competency
Science and Society
All core concepts and competencies should be fostered throughout the
curriculum. Students should gain competency in all these areas but an
expectation of expertise in only some of these.
Summary Points
• Distribution requires:
– Faculty development opportunities focused on iterative
course and curriculum design are required.
– Community of educators to share resources and expertise is
required
• Implementation on campuses:
– Useful for institutions to develop concept maps in the design
process to map how students experience introduction and
expansion of these concepts through the curriculum.
• Challenge:
– Existing textbooks are impediments to reform efforts.
Group 2
Student Centered Learning
Student-Centered Learning
Facilitators:
Pratibha VarmaNelson
Hal White
Michelle Withers
Capturing the faculty voice
“It’s not as hopeless as it seemed before coming
here”
“Maintain a sense of wonder”
“Take biology out of the realm of the abstract
and relate it to the real world”
Distilling the take-home points
Learn science by doing science.
Make it:
active,
outcome-oriented,
inquiry-driven,
authentic,
and relevant.
Give them ongoing, effective feedback.
Engage the passion.
Capturing the student voice
Engage us
Challenge us
Make it relevant to us
Give us ownership
Infect us with your enthusiasm
Excite us with the natural world
Make your goals transparent to us
Group 3
Assessing Student Learning
Assessment: Now
•
•
•
Commonly used assessments focus on
narrowly defined content -- not conceptual
understanding and the practice of science
Assessments often not aligned with
desired outcomes (goals/objectives)
Insights are often limited or expanded by
the nature of the assessment.
Assessment: what we need to
know
•
•
Degree to which specific pedagogical
approaches achieve desired learning
outcomes
Data to inform instruction at multiple levels:
individual courses, multiple sections of
courses, entire degree program.
Assessment
Align with course/curricular goals and
objectives
• Develop elements and conceptual
frameworks for assessment
• Disseminate exemplars and use best
practices
• Use a range of assessment types
• Assess with rigor
•
Student self-assessment
Students must learn how to use
assessments as a diagnostic tool.
• Instructor must model and practice
this with the students.
•
Use assessment to improve teaching
Assessment data should drive
instructional decisions at course level
and curricular decisions.
• Assessments must be rigorous
•
From assessment to research on
learning
Support system for scholarly work in
teaching and learning
• Process is similar to how scientific
research is conducted, with special
attention to human subject.
•
Group 4
Innovations in Integrating
Scientific Research Experiences
Across the Curriculum
Starting point
•Research experiences should be an integral
component of biology education for both
majors and non-majors.
•Research experiences need to start early in an
undergraduate career.
What to do
•Students should be introduced to aspects of the
scientific process in all biology courses.
•Specific learning goals related to research
experiences should be defined.
•Assessments should be employed to measure
attainment of learning goals.
Where to begin
•Multiple examples exist for involving both small
and large groups of students in research.
•Participants expressed a desire for accessible
online databases of curricular materials,
assessments, and examples of successful
projects.
r
Group 5
Toolkits to Support the Change
A. Cool Tools
Support inquiry, collaboration
Provide current, relevant context
Foster authentic research
experiences
Include learning outcomes
BBB
Search like Google
Recommend like Amazon
Vet like Consumer Reports
Annotate like Wikipedia
Web 2.0 will help
Group 6
Implementing Innovations and
Assessing Their Impact
Implementation
– Interested faculty and supportive administrators
– Culture of engagement (Compelling vision)
– Involved leadership at all levels
– Communication flow (both ways)
– Relevance to students e.g. social issues, timeliness
– Incentives for faculty
– Transparency of the process
– Appropriate physical environment, facilities
– Reliable assessment and evaluation to identify needs and
effectiveness
– Coordination among different learning communities
Assessment
•
•
Formative assessment is important for informing you about your program.
Assessment also needed to provide information to garner administrative, faculty
and student support. This form might be different than what is needed for
external financial support and scholarly publications.
• Training in assessment for those who are engaged in effecting change. Not just
depending on the hired expert.
• National database of assessment tools; listed by objectives of activity
• Tools:
Student attitudes—SERU (Student Engagement at Research Universities), NSSE, need
to be able to mine these data to understand more about our students; SALG; CLA
(collegiate learning assessment), case-based, evaluation of student ability to
critically evaluate and write problem/topic (Mark Chun)
•
Student research—currently much is student self-reported; rubrics for faculty to
evaluate student learning gains; IMMEX (originally from immunology), online,
complex problems, cluster into learning efficiencies, gains (UCLA)
Group 7
Preparing Faculty
Preparing Faculty Group Summary:
• There are existing limitations on the ways in
which faculty are prepared to teach biology, such
as lack of educational/pedagogical training. Our
group identified various strategies for
overcoming these limitations.
• These strategies require proper evaluation and
assessment tools to ensure their effectiveness
for continual improvement and enhancement.
• Implementation to address faculty teaching
requires input by various stakeholders
2 Strategies we want to highlight
•
•
To change the culture to value teaching and
mentoring through action by all stakeholders
(funding agencies, societies, academic
institutions, accreditation boards, faculty, and
students)
To develop and grow communities of scholars
(students, postdocs, faculty, and admin) who
are committed to creating, using, assessing,
and disseminating effective practices in
teaching and learning
To implement change what additional
resources and tools are needed?
• Visionary leaders: provided support to accomplish change/Exchange
Program
• More financial resources from funders and more time to develop and
implement successful and/or innovative practices for cultural change
• Budget line item in all grants (research and others) to focus on
teaching
• Point person(s) in department/institution to focus on evaluation of
teaching, with reporting back for continual improvement
• Better instruments to evaluate teaching and learning and where to
get them
• Intramural and extramural partnerships between Science and
Education researchers
• Workshops/ institutes/meetings, etc. to learn ‘best practices’
• Create a single point of access/portal that’s a searchable database.
Group 8
Changing Institutional Approaches
Group 8
Promoting Institutional Change
Potential change agents:
Administrators @
Professional Societies *
Faculty #
Funding agencies $
Students &
Needed changes:
• Raise profile of science education in the discipline (@ # * $)
• Increase recognition and reward for educational efforts (@ & *)
• Increase opportunities for professional development at all career
stages - graduate level through the professoriate (@ * $)
Group 8
Promoting Institutional Change
Barriers to change:
We have met the enemy, and the enemy are us!
- Walt Kelly