sciencegeekgirl.com

Postdoc available: Transform biology courses at CU Boulder

Stephanie Chasteen — Thu, 30 May 2013 19:38:21 +0000

Are you a biologist looking for a good way to get into education and education research? This is a great opportunity. My program, the Science Education Initiative at CU Boulder is seeking a candidate to assist with undergraduate course transformation efforts.

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The Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EBIO) and the Science Education Initiative (SEI), at the University of Colorado, Boulder, invites applicants for the position of Science Teaching Fellow to assist with enhancing teaching and learning in our undergraduate courses.

Candidates should hold a doctoral degree in Biology, Biology Education or a related field and have excellent organizational, interpersonal communication, team building and collaboration skills. The candidate’s primary interest and some experience should be in science education. Experience in developing active learning curricula and coaching educators is highly desirable.

The successful candidate will collaborate with new faculty towards the following goals: formulate learning goals, develop active learning-based curricula that align with learning goals, provide feedback on faculty teaching practices, and assess learning gains.

More information, and the email address to apply.

Journal of Visualized Experiments: Laboratory procedures video archive

Stephanie Chasteen — Thu, 16 May 2013 02:44:08 +0000

Just joined your advisor’s lab and don’t want to admit you don’t know how to use a fume hood? Teaching a laboratory class, and want to provide a resource for your students? Or are you needing to replicate another researcher’s protocol for removing mice mammaries? The Journal of Visualized Experiments (JOVE) is a very interesting repository (and well-produced) of video procedures, from the introductory to the advanced.

The advanced techniques are the bread and butter of the site, which is actually a peer-reviewed scientific video journal (Pub Med indexed), with posts from researchers on carbon nanotube fabrication to specialized mouse dissections.

However, they just launched a new science education video database, which is probably of more interest to the audience of this blog. From their press release:

The new Science Education database features collections of instructional videos designed to help teachers provide visual examples of basic laboratory techniques and to help students learn through clear demonstrations that they may review as often as necessary throughout their course and subsequent classes.

The Science Education database has launched with two collections, General Laboratory Techniques and Basic Methods in Cellular and Molecular Biology.

Says Moshe Pritsker, CEO of JoVE. “Instead of a single demonstration during class, students will be able to view the instruction repeatedly and learn at their own pace. This will not only increase their speed of learning and depth of knowledge, but also decrease the waste of laboratory and educational resources for universities and colleges”

The Science Education database is now available at www.jove.com/science-education-collection

Why we won’t teach your MOOC

Stephanie Chasteen — Fri, 03 May 2013 19:10:01 +0000

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an open letter from San Jose State University (Philosophy Department) indicating why they refused to teach a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) offered through EdX. It’s incredibly thoughtful and powerful, foretelling a future where university education is simply the facilitation of such pre-packaged courses by a glorified teaching assistant, losing the local character, context, and expertise of the hosting institution and individual academics. Here is a summary article by the Chronicle about the letter, which has some rather unsatisfying comments by San Jose State officials, and the professor who provided the original MOOC, but I found the letter much more interesting.

I hadn’t realized that these recorded MOOC lectures were being contracted by other universities as course material — I thought that MOOC’s were primarily used by individuals. This is a troublesome trend to me. While such online lectures could feasibly be used in a “flipped classroom” style approach, the more likely use is to replace local expertise with national “superstar” lecturers. It feels quite counter to the aim of a university education, to develop deep expertise in contact with experts in your field of study.

Envisioning & Implementing Effective Educational Programs

Stephanie Chasteen — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:27:23 +0000

A very nice article about me was just published in the Spring issue of the Newsletter of the Committee on the Status of Women in Physics. I think it’s a nice summary of what I’ve been focusing on in my career, and my philosophies of finding one’s path, so I am posting it here.

Here is the original article (PDF), and the full Spring issue (PDF).

Envisioning & Implementing Effective Educational Programs

Specialization is useful in many careers, but in Stephanie Chasteen’s case, diversification has played a key role. Dr. Chasteen works as a consultant and contractor on various projects aimed at improving science education through research, evaluation, writing, and creating educational activities.

While a physics graduate student at the University of California – Santa Cruz, Chasteen started considering a career in science journalism and was awarded a prestigious fellowship with the AAAS Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellows program. She was placed at the science desk at National Public Radio in Washington, DC, and here, Dr. Chasteen notes she “learned the high standards of excellence of national science reporting and developed a deep love for audio production.”

Upon graduation, Chasteen diversified her portfolio even more and took a departure from traditional science journalism by joining the Exploratorium Museum of Science, Art, and Human Perception as a postdoctoral fellow. She created hands-on activities and workshops for K-12 teachers, and the opportunity helped her discover her passion for science education. Her experience in writing was not in vain, however, as she notes “writing is one of the tools I carry in my kit toward creating effective education programs.”

Dr. Chasteen then joined the Science Education Initiative (colorado.edu/sei) at the University of Colorado at Boulder to work on transforming undergraduate science classes using research available on effective science education. Chasteen brought her experience in journalism to the physics education research group creating videos and podcasts for teachers about effective educational techniques, and in return, she received training in the methods and literature of science education.

Today, Dr. Chasteen still works with the Science Education Initiative as their outreach director, helping to spread the word through videos and workshops about research-based teaching techniques. She has also started her own consulting business (www.sciencegeekgirl.com). Through her business, she works on a variety of projects including directing videos to highlight the best use of the PhET Interactive Simulations (phet.colorado.edu/), reviewing K-12 student activity booklets, serving as an external evaluator for educational programs, and writing press releases about physics education research results to promote the field in the popular media.

She notes that her networking and volunteer work helped get her to this point, and for those interested in getting involved in science education and outreach, she advises them to approach networking “with a sense of genuine curiosity and interest in people.” Opportunities such as presenting at a science book club, auditing a writing course, and judging science fairs have led to job opportunities and helped shaped Chasteen’s career path.

Chasteen also credits her interest in diverse areas with leading her to create the specialization that she is now known for within the physics education research community. She notes that she was never sure of where her interests would lead her, but she just continued to follow what sparked her passion. “I think it’s so important to explore the things that we find fascinating, because that exploration can lead to great things.”

Clickers in the Social Sciences (#clicker series)

Stephanie Chasteen — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:12:28 +0000

Clickers are a natural fit for use in the physical sciences, where there is typically one right, or “best” answer to a question, and common errors in conceptual understanding or reasoning can lead to a wrong answer choice. But what about in other disciplines, such as the humanities and social sciences?

A nice recent article by Hoekstra and Mollborn (“A Meeting of the Minds: Using Clickers for Critical Thinking and Discussion in Large Sociology Classes,” Teaching Sociology, 38(1), 18-27, 2010) addresses this question in sociology. They have also created a nice guide: “ A Practical Guide to Implementing Clickers in the Sociology Classroom“, which you can download.

These folks are from my intellectual camp — starting with the learning goals of their sociology course, they ask how clickers can be used to generate the critical thinking and critiques of sociological methods that will lead to student achievement of their learning goals. While I would argue that many of these learning goals are also applicable in the natural sciences, it is a very nice article aimed at social science instructors to demonstrate how this tool can help improve student engagement in their classes.

Beyond concept-tests…

They found that when they asked students fact-based questions, that the students “worked hard at answering these questions, but they seemed intensely focused on getting the correct answer at the expense of thinking critically about the concepts they were applying.” The resulting classroom felt “examination oriented,” rather than explorative. They came to the conclusion that this type of question didn’t actually address the course learning goals in sociology. I, again, would argue that it also doesn’t address the learning goals in the natural sciences — we want our students to be able to reason through physical concepts and apply them, not just get the right answer. However, there does seem to be a critical difference here. Their “fact-based” questions (my words, not theirs) were oriented towards correctly applying sociological theories and concepts. In the physical sciences, this *is* what we mean by “reasoning” — the correct answer is only attained through critical thinking about how a particular concept applies in a specific situation. This is why clicker questions in physics can be so tricky. Below is an example of such a question (credit to www.physicslessons.com/demos.html):

Correct reasoning would be that dropping the bottle will cause the pressure on the water in the bottle to drop to zero, so that the water doesn’t pour out (D). So, critical thinking in the sciences will lead to a proper application of the principles of pressure, so this conceptual question can help students wrestle with difficult concepts.

In sociology, however, “correctly applying sociological theories and concepts” must not lead to the same sort of reasoning. Discussion, evaluation, and critique of key concepts are the hallmark of learning in the social sciences and humanities. So, how to accomplish this in a large lecture, and how can clickers help?

Encouraging critical thinking and discussion

The authors used short lecture segments along with group discussions, instructor clarification, and clicker questions. These clicker questions were intended to “promote critical sociological thinking,” and to “move beyond a ‘problem-based’ model.”

They used several types of clicker questions:

Reading quiz questions, to teach students to identify major themes
Opinion questions, to initiate discussion and encourage critical thinking about course concepts
Past experience questions, to use students as a sociological data set, relate materials to personal data, compare personal experience to the rest of the class, or to assess sociological theories by examining class data.
Concept test-style questions (of the type that were found to lead to a more examination-like atmosphere), to encourage students to solidify their knowledge by applying concepts or theories to new situations

They gave some examples of such questions, which I reprint here:

Reading quiz question:

In the reading, what gender combination led to the lowest likelihood of negotiating, as well as a poor evaluation if the job candidate does negotiate?

Female evaluator, female candidate

Female evaluator, male candidate

Male evaluator, female candidate

Male evaluator, male candidate

Opinion question:

How much do you personally think cultural factors explain differences in evidence of violent behaviors between men and women?

Not much at all

A little

They are sometimes useful

They explain most of what we see

Don’t know/other

Past experience question

When you were growing up, which of your parents earned the most money?

Don’t have two opposite-sex parents/one or both didn’t work/varied from year to year

Dad usually earned a lot more

Dad usually earned a little more

Mom usually earned a little more

Mom usually earned a lot more

Concept test-style question:

Does the sex labeling of occupations affect supply-side gender discrimination, demand- side gender discrimination, or both?

Supply side only

Demand side only

Both (correct answer)

Neither

Don’t know/other

I found their discussion of their use of the personal experience questions to be particularly rich and interesting, and to highlight how different clicker use can be in sociology. In physics, we might ask a personal opinion or experience question to help students to relate their experience to real life, but in sociology, the subject matter of the course is real life. So, much like a demonstration or lab in physics gives students tangible experience with the subject of the course, personal experience questions can use students as a rich data set to demonstrate or cast doubt upon theories of how people work. Here is an example:

We asked students to use clickers to identify their race. Because the 2000 U.S. census question design did not include the term Hispanic or Latino/a in the question about race, we were able to use this question to prompt in-class discussion about the social construction of racial and ethnic categories.

Sample Class

The authors also outlined a sample class to demonstrate how this would work in practice:

5-minute lecture segment on household labor
Large group discussion to define household labor
Past-experience question on students’ households (see above) and division of labor
Large group discussion of gender inequality in household labor
10 minute lecture on human capital explanations for division of labor
Concept test question to test students’ understanding by applying to new situation, where woman outearns the man
Opinion question on how useful students think that the human capital explanation is for explaining division of labor

Assessment

The authors used participant observation, student surveys, student interviews, and student responses on a one-page free write, to assess the effectiveness of this approach in three different courses.

Students were quite positive, but there was a little bit of backlash due to the fact that the authors chose to give students participation points for answering the questions.

The researchers noticed that the use of clickers changed the class culture and environment, as students took the class more seriously and were more likely to attend. Students participated more both through the simple act of voting on the questions, but also because the displayed diversity of opinion prompted them to speak up to explain their responses. This is the first time I have heard of such an effect, and it makes a lot of sense to me. Clickers also created a better sense of community in the class, which can be tough in a large class.

Tips for Facilitation

In my work, I often stress how critical (and challenging) it is for the instructor to lead an effective discussion about the clicker question after the votes are in. The authors also report that this was a crucial aspect of the clicker question effectiveness. They also summarize several other important considerations in facilitation, most of which are repeated in the materials we have created in the Science Education Initiative:

Write good questions that encourage critical thinking
Frame how and why clickers are being used, and cite research on benefits of active learning
Explain how student evaluation will be achieved with clickers
Indicate the “clicking in” for another student is cheating
Determine whether to include right/wrong answers in questions
Consider issues of confidentiality

They have also created a nice guide: “ A Practical Guide to Implementing Clickers in the Sociology Classroom“, which you can download.

Image from Kontos on Wikimedia