Helping faculty develop high-quality instruction that positively affects student learning can be complicated by time limitations, a lack of resources, and inexperience using student data to make iterative improvements. We describe a community of 16 faculty from five institutions who overcame these challenges and collaboratively designed, taught, iteratively revised, and published an instructional unit about the potential effect of mutations on DNA replication, transcription, and translation. The unit was taught to more than 2000 students in 18 courses, and student performance improved from preassessment to postassessment in every classroom. This increase occurred even though faculty varied in their instructional practices when they were teaching identical materials. We present information on how this faculty group was organized and facilitated, how members used student data to positively affect learning, and how they increased their use of active-learning instructional practices in the classroom as a result of participation. We also interviewed faculty to learn more about the most useful components of the process. We suggest that this professional development model can be used for geographically separated faculty who are interested in working together on a known conceptual difficulty to improve student learning and explore active-learning instructional practices.
This qualitative study uses expectancy-value theory to explore the motivation for college biology instructors to participate and persist in teaching professional development for 2.5 years.
College science instructors need continuous professional development (PD) to meet the call to evidence-based practice. New PD efforts need to focus on the nuanced blend of factors that influence instructors’ teaching practices. We used persona methodology to describe the diversity among instructors who were participating in a long-term PD initiative. Persona methodology originates from ethnography. It takes data from product users and compiles those data in the form of fictional characters. Personas facilitate user-centered design. We identified four personas among our participants: Emma the Expert views herself as the subject-matter expert in the classroom and values her hard-earned excellence in lecturing. Ray the Relater relates to students and focuses on their points of view about innovative pedagogies. Carmen the Coach coaches her students by setting goals for them and helping them develop skill in scientific practices. Beth the Burdened owns the responsibility for her students’ learning and feels overwhelmed that students still struggle despite her use of evidence-based practice. Each persona needs unique PD. We suggest ways that PD facilitators can use our personas as a reflection tool to determine how to approach the learners in their PD. We also suggest further avenues of research on learner-centered PD.
Common over-the-counter medicines can be an exciting
entry point
for introducing students to the interesting chemistries that they
encounter in their daily lives. In this inquiry-based activity, students
are tasked with using a list of given supplies and information about
four medications (Aspirin, Tums, Pepto-Bismol, and Tylenol) to design
three experiments that will enable them to identify which mystery
substance is which medication. This activity introduces students to
several chemical concepts, including acid–base reactions, redox
reactions, and chelation. Overall, comparing results of pre- and post-activity
assessments, students learned about and became more confident in their
knowledge of how natural products and metals can be used in medicine
and were able to correctly identify their unknown medications. Additionally,
a procedure-based activity for extracting bismuth from Pepto-Bismol
is included.
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