Joanne Fox

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.

One of the easiest things to do to improve as an educator is to watch others and take what you can to use in your own classrooms.

Recently, we hosted a professional development conference for BC high school teachers called, “It’s Your Experiment!” The workshop was part of our two day conference and aimed to develop new curricula based lesson plans for use in the classroom.  This was a chance for teachers to work with each other to generate teaching materials, link these teaching items to the BC high school IRPs and generally be creative.  We collaborated with Connie Cirkony, previously from the Engaging Science program at Science World – now with the BC ministry of education to facilitate the workshop.  Connie has lots of experience at facilitating workshops for teachers, and as an educator myself, I was interested in the process as much as I was interested in the outcomes.  Here’s a couple tricks of the “workshop facilitation” trade that Connie used that were good teaching tools.

The activity that we used to wrap up the workshop was to generate an action plan.  With this task, we gave teachers 1) a chance to think about it, 2) a chance

to write it down, and 3) a chance to share their action plan with other teachers in the group.  With each step in this activity the likelihood of actually completing the items on your list goes up.  Think about it, write it down, and tell someone… a real recipe for success!  Here’s an example of another implementation of this activity (from another conference that I participated in recently), a card provided to participants so that they can collect their ideas from the day.  Another great idea that we can use for our future teacher workshops/conferences.

The activities that we started off the day with included A) a reflection + B) a brainstorming session.  Both activities are real staples of an effective workshop.  With the brainstorming activity, we asked teachers to brainstorm ideas for lesson plans.  Which subjects did they have troubles teaching?  Which subjects would they like help with?  Which items did they really need a good lesson plan for?  We asked each teacher to write 5 ideas down, each item on a different colored recipe card.  Next, we turned this brainstorming activity into an organizing exercise by asking teachers to group the items together.  The final stage of the activity was to link these ideas to the BC curricula – as supplied by the list of PLO (prescribed learning outcomes) that the ministry of education published.   In the end, this exercise provided a good metacognition activity that captured ideas plus offered a chance for reflection.

Teachers Brainstorming and Organizing Ideas

Another reflection activity that Connie introduced, and I plan on using often with teachers, was what I’ll call the “Take your Hat off” activity.  In this activity, Connie invited the teachers “to take their workshop participants hats off and put on their teacher hats.”  With this invitation, she was asking the teachers to reflect on the logistics and design of the workshop as educators.  Use the model of the workshop as a model for what works in the classroom.  Observe what works, and put it to work. I’ve since used this “take your hat off” activity with a group of teachers with success.  I invited the group of teachers to “take your teacher hats off, put on your students hats.”  An invitation to reflect on what running this activity would be like in their classrooms, and how it would be received by their students.  It worked great too, because as soon as I asked the teachers to “put on your student hat” he started to goof off like a 14year old.  We had a lot of fun with that!  In addition to a setting a good tone, it worked as a perfect icebreaker activity.

I recently attended this talk by Robert Gateman.

Many of us know Robert Gateman as the flamboyant, somewhat bizarre, yet somehow appealing ECON 101 prof we had, or wish we had, in first-year. But how much do we really know about the most talked about UBC instructor on ratemyprofessors.com?  Click here for the full Ubyssey Gateman interview

I attended because I was interested in seeing Dr. Gateman in action.  He’s the most popular prof at UBC on ratemyprofessor.com.  What does he do that appeals to students?  His appeal is real at UBC.  400 students came out on a Monday night to hear an extra-curricular talk … that’s really quite amazing!  The energy in the room was excited.  Some students didn’t even know what he was going to be talking about, they just knew that this was supposed to be good.  And Gateman delivered.  He had some serious crowd control going and managed to use the group energy to capture the attention of the students.  For example, he started his lecture with his apparently typical, “Every body UP!” stretching routine to loud music.  I say apparently typical – because many students seemed to be expecting the routine.  Students were happy to shed typical routines, get up out of their seats, and do something different, together.  Watching Gateman deliver his lecture, I picked up on a few things that he does to capture the attention of his audiences in these large classroom settings.

• know your audience, build on what they know already, relate your teaching materials to what they can do
• connect personally, maintain eye contact as you move around, talk to individuals
• use theatrics, even props, his lecture wasn’t particulary polished — but you did feel like you were watching an actor in a play
• move around, never stay at the bottom of a big lecture hall
• have a simple message that keeps coming up the whole way through
• use humor, for example offbeat humor can make the message stick — i.e. tie it in a knot vs. global population control

Who knows?  I may find myself dropping in to see an Econ101 lecture to see if Dr. Gateman is as offbeat in a typical classroom.  I bet he is… and I can see why getting “something different” appeals to undergraduate students.  Thanks, Dr. Gateman, for the real life example of how it is possible to use these large classroom settings to capture the energy of large groups and connect with students.

Today I stopped in at the 2008 UBC Learning Conference “Bring Goals to Fruition” Learning Goals Workshop, presented by members of the UBC Earth and Ocean Sciences Science Education Initiative.

Building effective learning goals is a corner stone for increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the teaching / learning experiences for both you and your students.

Also at this workshop was Beth Simon, a Science and Teaching Learning Fellow with the CWSEI. I’ve interacted with her a lot via email and over the phone about science education initiatives happening over in Computer Science, so it was nice to finally meet her in person. As for the workshop itself, I participated in some brainstorming activities and discussion about learning goals. Nothing really that new, but it was a good opportunity for reflection. In particular, we reflected on the nature of learning goals and how they can be classified into different types: cognitive, skills, and attitude. I also thought it was good how the workshop highlighted the importance of having learning goals at different levels, for example generalized goals that relate to the whole course, as well as specific goals for each lecture. All in all, it was time well spent.

The ASM Education Department offers professional development institutes that aim to improve science teaching. I first heard about these “Bioinformatics Institutes” for educators at the ASMCUE 2008 meeting. The official tag line for this conference for undergraduate educators was “Celebrating 15 years of Teaching Excellence,” however, the subtext that emerged for me was the sorry state of teaching bioinformatics at the university/college level. There are some bright spots, but across the board, educators are struggling with how to get bioinformatics into their curricula. Thus, the need for these workshops that offer just in time training for instructors.

The Summer Bioinformatics Institute, Enhancing the Undergraduate Curriculum through Bioinformatics, aims to meet the need for more undergraduate faculty in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines to understand, interpret, and use molecular sequence information to solve problems. The program features the analysis of microbial genomes, molecular sequences, and structural data, providing a framework for developing classroom activities and research projects for undergraduate students.

Check out facultyprograms.org for more information.

Programs like this one offer great opportunities but have limited spots available. A complementary solution would be for a small groups of faculty to come together and develop portable training programs that deal with bioinformatics content as well as how to teach bioinformatics that could be offered locally at multiple institutions.

A common set of guiding principals about “What to teach?” could be very useful for this kind of “train the trainers” type of endeavor. I’ll be following the outcomes of this Workshop on Computational Education for Scientists with much interest as it deals with that very question.

In response to my last post about the digital disconnect, I would like to point to these resources from the Educause Learning Initiative. Each of these “7 Things You Should Know About…” articles points out the main features of the emerging technology and gives an example scenario about how you can use these tools that students use in real life in your classroom.

7 Things You Should Know About…pieces provide quick, no-jargon overviews of emerging technologies and related practices that have demonstrated or may demonstrate positive learning impacts. Any time you need to explain a new learning technology or practice quickly and clearly, look for a 7 Things You Should Know About… brief from ELI.

Here are some direct links to a couple of my favorite articles from this series:
7 Things You Should Know About Flickr
7 Things You Should Know About Twitter
7 Things You Should Know About Ning
7 Things You Should Know About FaceBook
7 Things You Should Know About FaceBook II

You’ve got your popcorn. You’ve found a seat. The rustling of cell phones coming out of pockets begins. If you miss this opportunity, you’ll be faced with burning glares. “Turn off your cell phone or die!” It’s become part of our culture to “power down” at the movies. But even that norm is shifting. Most young people I know switch their phones to silent and continue to text each other as the movie plays. When Monday rolls around should we really be asking our students to “power down” before going to school?

Young students today are asking, “Why can’t we learn the way we live?”

The theme for this year’s e-Strategy Townhall conference at UBC is “Here and Virtually There – UBC and the Digital Generation.” I believe that incorporating technology into educational initiatives goes beyond engagement for students. This means that the students role is shifting to participating in and even producing their own educational experience. The role of educator is also shifting. Educators must become facilitators for learning – willing to learn on the fly – and coach students on how to navigate through their own educational experience using technology.

The ideas presented during a panel about the “digital disconnect” and the role of educators as coaches particularly resonated with me. The panel was a featured session at the e-Strategy Townhall entitled, “Network Learning – Seeing Through the Clouds”. This e-Stategy mini-conference is hard to describe. It’s a group of educators, IT professionals, interested tech-savy folk at the University who come together to talk about how to better incorporate technology into the educational experience. I’ve presented to this audience before about bioinformatics resources available to researchers and educators.

Today’s panel included a video conference with Julie Evans – CEO of Project Tomorrow from Irvine California responsible for the Speak-up Survey that carrys out focus groups with grade school kids. She made the point that students “power down” for going to school. School life is not at all like the technology rich like that they live at home. She also made the point that students are asking, “Why can’t we learn the way we live?”

Another virtual panelist was Peter Arthur – Director, Centre for Teaching & Learning, UBC Okanagon. He countered with the comments that, “Students are not all ready.” He worries that for students currently in undergraduate communities, information literacy is still coming. Back to Julie’s data from the grade school age kids. Her findings indicate that the most desired technology is a laptop that students can take home.

For me, it’s all about how we can making learning relevant. An interesting discussion about how to “open up” to these ideas ensued. We need to let students explore, support skill development, and provide support for students putting content online (example, wikipedia articles). Gaming, simulations, animations all can be used to develop problem solving skills. Mechanisms for celebrating and disseminating student successes and the knowledge bases they create needs to be supported.

Some of the comments that resonated with me the most were regarding the Coach-Teacher relationship. In the university environment we must begin to embrace this new role for teachers, as coaches, facilitators, and mentors. This means that as educators we need to be on top of the latest technology and feel comfortable with learning things as we go. David Wiley, Director, Centre for Open & Sustainable Learning, Utah State University made the point that students have become “free agent learners” going outside their normal learning environments to find information.

To participate in this new cooperative style learning process, we must be willing to push our own boundaries and become coaches to these free agents. I’ve always believe that coaching is a big part of the educational experience but with the pervasiveness of technology this role is becoming even more important. Accepting this challenge offers an exciting way forward for me as an educator.

SRI International has conducted several surveys in an attempt to evaluate undergraduate research and training programs in the US (read the executive summary).  In short, the take home message is that undergraduate research is something we should actively support.  Hands-on experience helps to keep students interested in Science careers.  You can read more about this survey in the Education Forum found in the current issue of Science Magazine.

The SPIRE postdoctoral fellowship program is “an innovative approach to advance science careers by balancing research, teaching and service.”

SPIRE’s Mission:

To provide multi-dimensional professional development for science researchers and educators to succeed in academic careers, to bring engaging teaching methods into the classroom, and to increase diversity in science professions.

It sounds like a great program. Unfortunately, I was reading the fineprint and you’ve got to be a US citizen to apply. I wonder if there’s a Canadian equivalent?