– ChronicleVitae Pursuing a doctoral degree has tremendous costs, even when the degree is “fully funded.” Doctoral students fall behind their peers with B.A.s and M.A.s in many significant ways, and not just financially. Because doctoral training is, by and large, not suited for most nonacademic careers, Ph.D.s who leave the academy must often learn radically…
– CBE Life Sciences Despite its value in higher education, academic rigor is a challenging construct to define for instructor and students alike. How do students perceive academic rigor in their biology course work? Using qualitative surveys, students were asked to identify “easy” or “hard” courses and define which aspects of these learning experiences contributed to…
– CBE Life Sciences The Current Insights feature is intended to highlight diverse perspectives on teaching, learning and cognition from outside life sciences education. In this installment, the author features recent examples of scholarship examining the intersections between culture and equity in science education. The articles in this set build on intuitions we may hold as…
Telling is a time-tested and efficient way to communicate information. Just try to keep the strengths and weaknesses of lecturing in mind. The most effective teaching involves looking to communicate information in inefficient ways — that is, in ways that make students work to understand the information, and not just listen passively. So when we…
Shanna Shaked, CEILS Senior Associate Director and lecturer in Physics received a teaching award for her work revising and teaching Physics 5B. Ian McLean, faculty in Physics and Astronomy who serves as the Chair of CEILS Advisory Board, received an award for Physics 5C. Josh Samani, CEILS Instructional Consultant and Lecturer PSOE received an award…
– CBE Life Sciences Group work is often a key component of student-centered pedagogies, but there is conflicting evidence about what types of groups provide the most benefit for undergraduate students. The authors investigated student learning outcomes and attitudes toward working in groups when students were assigned to groups using different methods in a large-enrollment, student-centered…
– CBE Life Sciences Based on positive student outcomes, providing research experiences from early undergraduate years is recommended for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. To this end, the authors designed a novel research experience called the “STEMCats Research Experience” (SRE) for a cohort of 119 second-semester freshmen with diverse college preparatory levels, demographics,…
Congratulations to two CIRTL Scholars for presenting their Teaching as Research projects on the CIRTL network to the national cross network community. Elizabeth Mills: “Mixed Methods Assessment of Introductory Physics for Life Sciences Labs at UCLA” and Elizabeth Reid-Wainscoat: “Does temperament composition impact group dynamics in an upper division biology lab course?” Elizabeth Mills Elizabeth…
Quantitative Undergraduate Biology Education and Synthesis (QUBES) project offers an online platform to facilitate faculty professional development and sharing open educational resources for teaching quantitative skills. QUBES offer professional development opportunities called Faculty Mentoring Networks (FMNs). FMNs are semester-long professional development opportunities designed to engage you with other faculty to enhance your teaching. This Spring…
AAU is aware that there is a large body of literature on how people learn as well as a number of valid ways for faculty members to engage in formative assessment of their teaching. AAU has created a matrix that is intended to capture strategies campuses are using to incorporate evidence beyond student course evaluation…