Joanne Fox

I was just looking over some notes from a seminar where I jotted down:

Goals for Portfolios

1. Share best practices, learn, see examples
2. Tenure, hiring
3. Feedback, reflection on personal effectiveness

I can’t remember what the seminar was about – all I remember is that it had nothing to do with portfolios – but something from my day must have sparked me into thinking about teaching portfolios.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about, “How Scientists Think?”  I’m excited to be working on an innovative curricula project here at UBC centered around science as a way of knowing.

…more about this later…

To this end, I just read this article, “How Scientists Think in the Real World: Implications for Science Education” by Kevin Dunbar.

According to the article, scientists are particularly stimulated by unexpected results, love making analogies, and work best in groups.  I’d say, “That’s about right!”

In thinking about how my teaching strategies align with these values, I came up with a short list of ideas.  Encourage group work, practice using analogies, explicitly encourage the use of analogy by students, and ready students for the unexpected.

I was recently asked how I would respond to PhD students who are in the process of putting together their own teaching portfolios and are wondering, “Is it really worth the effort?”

Here are my thoughts:

1) Putting together your e-portfolio is a valuable chance for personal reflection.  I found that the process of putting together my e-portfolio helped me to summarize and evaluate my own teaching skills and philosophy towards education.  You can look at the experiences you’re documenting in your portfolio and see your own personal strengths and weaknesses.  This kind of critical evaluation can be really valuable in job applications, interview scenarios AND for your own personal growth.

2) I’ve used my e-portfolio in at least two different job applications (required in the academic world).  Having an e-portfolio at the ready made it a lot easier to apply for jobs quickly.  Outside of academia, having an up-to-date e-portfolio helps you see your own personal strengths and weaknesses – and have lots of examples at the ready for interviews, cover letters etc.  It’s like having an ubber resume at the ready.

3) An e-portfolio helps you get organized.  I used to have a binder / really big pile of stuff that I wanted to put together into a teaching portfolio.  Honestly, it was a big effort to get the e-portfolio started but I enjoyed the process.  I like using wordpress and now that I’ve got it started updating is easy.

I recently read this Idea Paper about “Student Goal Orientation, Motivation, and Learning” by Marilla D. Svinicki. It’s interesting to think about what motivates the students we teach. I think this paper summarizes nicely how to reach out to the majority of students:

1. Prioritize Learning
2. Expect Success
3. Make Your Class a Safe Place
4. Encourage Community
5. Offer Choices
6. Be a Role Model

I just finished writing a TLEF grant to support the UBC MIX project. I’m pretty excited about the potential of this project.

UBC MIX is a project that creates new learning experiences for UBC students by developing cross-discipline and cross-faculty partnerships between courses already taught at UBC. UBC MIX brings together faculty members interested in making small adjustments to their class curriculum that can MIX, or bring together, students from two different courses. Examples of innovative teaching partnerships include joint lectures, electronic discussions between the classes, joint field trips, and mixed-class group projects. The idea behind UBC MIX is to compliment the curriculum of both classes by exploring links between subjects, exposing the students to new ideas, and encouraging students to explore their own subject areas from a different point of view. By facilitating connections, developing resources, and supporting MIX activities, the UBC MIX project aims to offer UBC undergraduate students access to unique opportunities for exploring interdisciplinary connections in their education.

This summer I traveled to the University of Ibadan in Nigeria to participate in the West African Biotechnology Workshops as an invited instructor. Here is an update that I wrote during my stay.

Being a scientist in Nigeria means being very resourceful in finding solutions to barriers… the power goes out 2-4x per day or some days does not come on at all. Scientists here are very practiced at being practical & creative at the same time, a recipe for good science. Only one day did I start to think that the barriers were too big… but then the attitude of the students brought me back around. They work very very hard and are very excited about what they are learning. There are ~20 graduate students, medical doctors, and technicians taking our course. The people that I have met here in Nigeria is what I have enjoyed most. They are full of hope that their country will become one of the top 20 countries in the world. (The goverment has a plan called the 20:20 vision – that hopes to use education, science and technology to raise the profile of Nigeria by 2020). It has been interesting to talk to these young graduate students, to get their own views on the corrupt government and the political problems in the North, and the wars in the Delta (the oil rich region of the country). It is a country with many problems. For example, Nigeria’s children account for 18% of the global under-5 mortality rate. The UN has identified Nigeria as one African country that, if it were to improve and aim to meet the Millienium Development Goals, could make the most impact.

I’ve recently received word that the two TLEF grants that I submitted were both funded!  The Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF) was created in 1991 at UBC to enrich student learning by supporting innovative and effective educational enhancements.

Project #1: University of British Columbia International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) team, submitted with Dr. Eric Lagally & Dr. David Ng

We seek to initiate a team of undergraduate students to compete in the current year’s International Genetically Engineered Machines competition.  The iGEM competition draws teams of undergraduates from the top universities all over the world to try to answer the question:  “Can simple biological systems be built from interchangeable parts and operated in living cells, or is biology simply too complex to be engineered in this way?”

The team will work for a summer on the assigned project and submit their findings to an international conference, the iGEM Jamboree, held annually in mid-November at MIT. This funding request covers part of the costs of entering and running a UBC team, as well as travel costs to the conference to present their findings. Other required funds will be provided by in-kind and cash donations from UBC academic units and industrial partners.

Project #2: TERRY TALKS – INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDENT JAM` – Ideas that Inspire Action, submitted with Dr. David Ng, Dr. Allens Sens, Chad Hyson, Jamil Rhajiak, Nabila Pirani

“Terry talks” is an annual event where students are given a high profile platform to communicate their passions and desires. It essentially borrows a template from a well-established conference known as the TED conference, and modifies it for delivery within the UBC community.

Here, the general intent is to bring together the University’s “most fascinating (student) thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives.” Under this context, a single day conference can accommodate 9 student speakers from a wide range of interests and backgrounds. The talks will be held at a large venue, where one can engage a significant number of audience members. The talks will also be video archived for online viewing after the event.

This would provide stimulating content, relevant to a variety of globally relevant issues, and would ultimately foster collaborative efforts and idea sharing amongst the conference attendees. In all, this will strengthen the existing networks responsible for student led initiatives, and in doing so act as a significant catalyst in creating a stronger socially responsible student community.

Woo hoo!

As the new semester starts back into full swing, I’m still digesting the student evaluations that I carried out last term.

Here’s the full report.

Stay tuned for a more detailed analysis…

Here’s an interesting idea, let’s design what we teach around the question, “What do Scientists Do?”

I was originally exposed to this simple, but amazingly “outside-the-box” idea, by Ellen Aho, a professor at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN. I met Ellen at the ASMCUE 2008 conference where she presented, “The student-led conference style symposia as a technique for developing oral presentation skills in a moderately sized Microbiology course.” Ellen posed the question, “What do scientists do?” and then made the point that our teaching activities should be related to these activities. An interesting idea… The program that she teaches in at Concordia College is designed with this paradigm in mind (i.e., this won’t be the first time students have seen it). In addition to the in-class conference idea, other classes in her program have writing assignments, peer review, posters, etc. etc.

In keeping with my last post, of take what works and put it to work, Ellen’s idea had been percolating in the back of my mind for some time as a possibility for new content for MICB405. As part of this course, students carry out a self-directed research project (in groups of 4 students). The MICB405 group research project already contains a proposal submission, a final report, and a presentation of results at an in-class poster session. By treating these groups of students like graduate students embarking on their own research projects, and then preparing to attend their first conference with results, we hope to give students an authentic research experience. Thus far, the research component of MICB405 has worked well, but we thought that we could improve it by expanding on this idea of “what do scientists really do…”

Early in the semester, in collaboration with my co-instructor M. Murphy, we talked about ways into which we could inject new energy into the research project component of MICB405. Our real goal was to raise the overall quality of research projects by increasing student engagement and providing more opportunities for feedback (both peer and instructor).

For the 2008 offering of MICB405, we added several new in-class activities to this component of the course. 6 lectures in total were dedicated to the group research project. Students were asked to: 1) submit a proposal, 2) carry out a peer review of submitted proposals**, 3) attend a feedback session on their proposal with the instructor, 4) submit a progress report**, 5) participate in an in-class discussion of critical evaluation of research results from their progress reports**, 6) prepare a poster for two-day in-class conference, 7) peer evaluate posters presented in-class and 8 ) prepare a final report. Peer evaluation and self-evaluation of individuals from student groups was also carried out.

**2,4,5 are new activities for 2008, and the in-class time dedicated to this project was increased from 4hr (in 2007) to 9hrs (in 2008). Highlights of these new lecture time included in-class peer review activities as well as lecture content explaining the peer review process in science. Michael talked about his experiences participating in CIHR review panels, and students responded very well to this new content.

More formally, here are the new learning objectives that Murphy and I introduced alongside these new research project based activities for the 2008 offering of MICB405:

Section 5: Research methods and critical assessment.
38.    You will be able to define a biological hypothesis that can be tested by bioinformatics methods.
39.    You will be able to critically evaluate a bioinformatics tool based on the assessment features available.
40.    You will be able to critically assess the degree to which the bioinformatics method supports a biological hypothesis
41.    You will be able to describe the methods, results and conclusions of a bioinformatics research project in a written report and as a poster presentation.

Anecdotally, these new activities achieved our goal of raising the overall quality of research carried out by students. During the poster session, I noticed that the average depth of research achieved by each group was higher as compared to last year, especially at the bottom end. I think that increased opportunities for feedback and more in-class dedicated time were responsible for this shift. I did carry out an in-class survey with respect to the research project components, so next up is analysis of those evaluations.