Professors love to hate grade inflation, saying course marks aren’t as meaningful as they used to be. A new paper makes the case that easy grading is actually a symptom of poor assessment practices rather than a cause and that, either way, reducing leniency in grading may lead to more accurate assessment. [MORE]
A recent report explores the gap between evidence-based teaching practices and the methods that undergraduate instructors typically use. (Inside Higher Ed) The report is titled “Unpacking Relationships: Instruction and Student Outcomes” and can be viewed in full here.
Coming from a small school district in Ohio where few girls took part in intensive mathematics or science classes, Callie Zawaski was an outlier. “I may have been the only person in my grade who was excited by STEM classes,” she says. After being accepted into Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering, the school’s dean encouraged…
I recently had a conversation with a faculty member about the midterm feedback she had received from the students in her course. Her response to their suggestions echoed one I often hear in my work in faculty development: “Really, I can’t believe all the things students want me to do for them nowadays—they expect to be spoon-fed. This…
Pictured above are Director of the mini-grant Dr. Gina Poe (middle), and Co-Directors Drs. Megan McEvoy (right) and Erin Sanders (left). UCLA is among 12 universities nationally to be awarded a grant from the Association of American Universities to fund workshops on campus over the next year to assess all programs that support and retain undergraduate…
Undergraduate research has a rich history, and many practicing researchers point to undergraduate research experiences (UREs) as crucial to their own career success. There are many ongoing efforts to improve undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education that focus on increasing the active engagement of students and decreasing traditional lecture-based teaching, and UREs have…
i<Clicker or similar polling systems are tools that instructors can use to effectively implement active learning in the classroom. Well designed questions can provide instructors with real-time feedback to highlight misconceptions, increase curiosity, and prompt student peer discussion. Come and learn how to set-up the interactive polling system using i<Clicker. This session will include getting…
2017 UCLA Mobile Summer Institute on Scientific Teaching July 24-28, 2017 | University of California, Los Angeles Applications now open! The Summer Institute (SI) is a prestigious teaching development program that aims to improve college education in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and to enhance the academic success of all students by helping current…
When searching for work, doctoral students ought to know about life science clusters–geographic groups of universities, research labs, science parks, incubators, hospitals, start-ups, large companies, and government agencies. Here are four. [MORE]
PDF Version available: 2017_Call For Nominations_Life Sciences Excellence Awards