Getting More Scientists to Revamp Teaching

Vicens, Quentin; Caspersen, Michael E.

doi:10.2505/4/jcst14_043_05_22

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Despite a great deal of research indicating that active learning techniques help students learn more and at deeper conceptual levels (20), several key barriers to reform have been identified, including student push-back (41,43), lack of supportive pedagogical infrastructure (8,26), and lack of professional reward and promotion structures (16,25,52). If instructors and/or students cannot see the benefits associated with the extra time and effort active learning requires, too often instructors will abandon, rather than refine, their initial attempts at course reform (43,50,51). While the course reform chronicled here includes well-documented active learning techniques, its success and large student learning gains in HOCS warrant reflection on why the changes were successful and why they continue to be in place today.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Over 4 yr, the same instructor (author JC) taught this course and incrementally incorporated evidence-based, active learning approaches. While active learning approaches have a wealth of support that they improve student learning (23,36,53), implementation in classrooms is sometimes met with mixed success (4,39,43,49,50). In addition, the neurophysiology course revisions required both substantial time to develop and refine and increased the workload for students and graduate teaching assistants (TAs).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Redesigning a course to help students achieve higher-order cognitive thinking skills: from goals and mechanics to student outcomes

Casagrand

Semsar

2017

Advances in Physiology Education

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Here we describe a 4-yr course reform and its outcomes. The upper-division neurophysiology course gradually transformed from a traditional lecture in 2004 to a more student-centered course in 2008, through the addition of evidence-based active learning practices, such as deliberate problem-solving practice on homework and peer learning structures, both inside and outside of class. Due to the incremental nature of the reforms and absence of pre-reform learning assessments, we needed a way to retrospectively assess the effectiveness of our efforts. To do this, we first looked at performance on 12 conserved exam questions. Students performed significantly higher post-reform on questions requiring lower-level cognitive skills and those requiring higher-level cognitive skills. Furthermore, student performance on conserved questions was higher post-reform in both the top and bottom quartiles of students, although lower-quartile student performance did not improve until after the first exam. To examine student learning more broadly, we also used Bloom's taxonomy to quantify a significant increase in the Bloom's level of exams, with students performing equally well post-reform on exams that had over twice as many questions at higher cognitive skill levels. Finally, we believe that four factors provided critical contributions to the success of the course reform, including: transformation efforts across multiple course components, alignment between formative and evaluative course materials, student buy-in to course instruction, and instructional support. This reform demonstrates both the effectiveness of incorporating student-centered, active learning into our course, and the utility of using Bloom's level as a metric to assess course reform.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Redesigning a course to help students achieve higher-order cognitive thinking skills: from goals and mechanics to student outcomes

Casagrand

Semsar

2017

Advances in Physiology Education

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“…Overall, change is slowed down by the Bossuet paradox, which states that "human beings deplore in general what they accept in particular" [13]. Furthermore, resistance to instructional change arises from lack of time and situational constraints (e.g., the rise in administrative burden), in an environment built mostly to support research, as well as from lack of knowledge about or perhaps mistrust in science education findings [14,15]. Usually, faculty members are recruited among top students, who were naturally able to learn within traditional classrooms and who may therefore not recognize the benefits of changing the learning environment.…”

Section: Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although hands-off approaches may help with creating a momentum toward instructional change [14], sustainability remains an issue. To that end, our strategy has been to involve academics from diverse backgrounds and at different levels, so that communication can also take place, for example, between instructors or educational specialists and the main deciders (such as department chairs or university presidents).…”

Section: Pros and Cons Of A Hands-off Approach To Modernizing Teachingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A forum where french‐speaking faculty can exchange research on teaching

Vicens

Coumoul

Souciet

2019

Biochem Molecular Bio Educ

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In order to help promote instructional change at Frenchspeaking universities in Europe, we initiated a series of 1-day events centered on learning innovations. Since 2015, these events have been taking place every 6 months at the Université Paris Descartes, with the moral support of three learned scientific societies, the French Academy of Sciences, and sponsoring by leaders in textbook editing and classroom technologies. Each event gathers~40 participants (faculty members, postdocs, and educational specialists) from four countries (Belgium, France, Luxemburg, Switzerland) and invitees, who share their active learning practices, flipped classroom variations representing the

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“…Using clickers can catalyze pedagogical change at research universities (Koenig, 2010;Kolikant, Drane, & Calkins, 2010;Vicens & Caspersen, 2014). In this article we shared the variety of ways that we use clickers to promote deliberate practice in large science courses.…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%