Summary Slides From Final Plenary Session

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Summary Slides From Final Plenary Session

• AAAS Conference on Transforming Undergraduate
  Biology Education

July 17, 2009 Washington DC
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• Student Perceptions

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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 doesnt 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 doesnt
matter what you know if you cant express it to
someone else, either in your field or someone who
isnt familiar with it at all.
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What excites you most in a learning environment?

• Being challenged
• Two-way conversations between faculty and
  students
• Tie what Im 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 Im learning in
  other classes?
• Analogies, NOT Jargon
• Getting to apply what you learned

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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
• Dont respond, put you off, or are inaccessible
• Are clearly not into teaching
• Use small group discussions as an excuse not to
  teach anything
• Dont communicate clearly (language, style,
  writing)
• Dont give exams back, give exams back late, give
  no explanation of what the right answer was, or
  re-use tests that dont 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)

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Group 1

• Overarching and Unifying Key Concepts and
  Competencies

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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.
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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.

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Group 2

• Student Centered Learning

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Student-Centered Learning

• Facilitators
• Pratibha Varma-Nelson
• Hal White
• Michelle Withers

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Capturing the faculty voice

• Its 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

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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.

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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

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Group 3

• Assessing Student Learning

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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.

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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.

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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

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Student self-assessment

• Students must learn how to use assessments as a
  diagnostic tool.
• Instructor must model and practice this with the
  students.

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Use assessment to improve teaching

• Assessment data should drive instructional
  decisions at course level and curricular
  decisions.
• Assessments must be rigorous

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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.

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Group 4

• Innovations in Integrating Scientific Research
  Experiences Across the Curriculum

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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Group 5

• Toolkits to Support the Change

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A. Cool Tools

• Support inquiry, collaboration
• Provide current, relevant context
• Foster authentic research experiences
• Include learning outcomes

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B
BBB
Search like Google Recommend like Amazon Vet
like Consumer Reports Annotate like Wikipedia Web
2.0 will help
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Group 6

• Implementing Innovations and Assessing Their
  Impact

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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

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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 attitudesSERU (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 researchcurrently 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)

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Group 7

• Preparing Faculty

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• 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

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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

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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 thats a
  searchable database.

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Group 8

• Changing Institutional Approaches

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Potential change agents Administrators
_at_ Professional Societies Faculty
Funding agencies Students

• Needed changes
• Raise profile of science education in the
  discipline (_at_ )
• Increase recognition and reward for educational
  efforts (_at_ )
• Increase opportunities for professional
  development at all career stages -
  graduate level through the professoriate (_at_ )

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Barriers to change We have met the enemy, and
the enemy are us! - Walt Kelly