Professional development workshop slides to help curate conversations in teaching statistics with a critical inquiry lens.

Workshop about models for introducing social justice issues into classes developed in a Faculty Mentoring Network. Presented at the 2021 BIOME Institute.

As instructors, we continually look for new ways to create equitable learning environments and support learning for all students in our courses. Recently, we have explored ways that we can increase structure to better support students. We have identified four evidence-based elements that we include in our course design and implementation: 1) structured assessments and feedback; 2) structured out-of-class learning; 3) structured class time using inclusive practices; and 4) structured assignments using transparent design. In this essay, we identify some relevant literature to address each of these levels of structure and describe our experiences with implementation at each level to support equitable classroom environments.

This webinar will explore how faculty can teach with a growth mindset and identify some potential areas of fixed mindset that might prove to be obstacles for many students.

Three resources for faculty interested in an introduction to Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

In this lesson, students plot data and interpret graphs of the metabolic responses of fish to hypoxic conditions. Then, students view and reflect on an interview with fish ecophysiologist Benjamin Negrete, Jr., who collected the data that they graph.

Providing undergraduate life-science students with a course-based research experience that utilizes cutting-edge technology, is tractable for students, and is manageable as an instructor is a challenge. Here, I describe a multi-week lesson plan for a laboratory-based course with the goal of editing the genome of budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Students apply knowledge regarding advanced topics such as: CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, DNA repair, genetics, and cloning. The lesson requires students to master skills such as bioinformatics analysis, restriction enzyme digestion, ligation, basic microbiology skills, polymerase chain reaction, and plasmid purification. Instructors are led through the technical aspects of the protocols, as well as the teaching philosophy involved throughout the laboratory experience. As it stands, the laboratory lesson is appropriate for 6-8 weeks of an upper-level undergraduate laboratory course, but may be adapted for shorter stints and students with less experience. Students complete the lesson with a more realistic idea of life science research and report significant learning gains. I anticipate this lesson to provide instructors and students in undergraduate programs with a hands-on, discovery-based learning experience that allows students to cultivate skills essential for success in the life sciences.

The integration of virtual technology is becoming a common trend in anatomy education at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The incorporation of virtual 3D anatomical models into the classroom is beneficial to students, especially if they do not have access to cadavers. This lesson is a hybrid kinesiology laboratory module that includes virtual anatomical and traditional physiological laboratory components. The module contains procedures that are easy for undergraduate students to follow while also containing advanced content to promote higher order thinking. This lesson provides a brief description of the learning context, time and pace, lesson plan, and teacher and student evaluations. During the learning activities, students will use a virtual dissection Anatomage Table and conduct modified Wingate tests and accumulated oxygen deficit experiments. This module will be useful for anatomy and physiology instructors who want to blend virtual and traditional learning modalities, embrace active learning, and make advanced concepts more accessible to students.

Primary image: A photograph of the Anatomage Table in its vertical orientation, revealing three different layers of the virtual male donor model in virtual dissection. 

Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2011) stresses the importance of fostering an understanding of the relationship between science and society. We describe a library-based activity that enables students in an undergraduate microbiology class to explore this relationship over the course of centuries, with the library functioning as a laboratory. Students are guided by a worksheet as they explore historical materials such as books, newspapers, letters, government publications, articles, scientific treatises, and artifacts. Working in pairs, students answer questions about the content and reflect on how the ideas in the documents relate to the scientific understanding at the time. Exploring authentic materials in a library setting provides a powerful learning experience. This activity was also successful using digitized documents during the COVID-19 pandemic, when remote teaching was required. Student responses to a post-activity questionnaire indicated that the activity sparked a keen interest in the history of science as well as introspection about the relationship between science and society. This approach can be generalized for different biology courses and education levels.

Primary image:  Students examining historical books and microscopes. Students working in pairs to complete worksheet questions during one of two visits to the University of Colorado Boulder’s Special Collections.

The biology classroom is not separate from the greater context of society; social issues can and should be presented in connection with the content. Here we present an example of antiracist teaching using the molecular/cellular biology of cancer in an introductory biology course as a topic through which to address historic racial disparities. Through this lesson, students analyzed biological science through the lens of social justice, specifically looking at disparities of cancer incidence with ties to health outcomes and environmental racism. The synchronous activity begins with personal tie-ins to the broader subject of cancer and then dives into the molecular regulation involved in creating cancerous phenotypes. Cancer biology is explored using an active-learning style based in process-oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL) tactics. Multiple levels of assessments pushed students to grapple with data about racial health disparities and make explicit connections between these data and molecular mechanisms of cancer formation. This paper provides activity worksheets, an activity timeline, an example of assessment items, and teacher preparation for other instructors who want to emulate this lesson either directly or as an example of adjusting other science topics towards this lens. For those teaching in different topics, we offer advice and examples to help instructors to include social justice lenses into their science teaching.

Primary image: Malignant History. Artwork by Heidi-Marie Wiggins and Jeannette Takashima.

There is a growing call to decolonize curricula in academia, including in scientific disciplines. In the biology classroom, this includes highlighting a diverse array of scientists and illuminating injustice and exploitation carried out by Eurocentric biologists and medical professionals. Despite this general roadmap, literature presenting and assessing classroom modules on decolonizing science is lacking. Here, I present an activity designed to shed light on the deep, historical relationship between natural history collections and the exploitation of slaves and Indigenous peoples and encourage students to critically evaluate how society influences science. Due to COVID-19, this activity was conducted remotely and included two synchronous discussion sessions and three asynchronous homework activities for Mammalogy students. Assignments were evaluated for student outcomes including reflections on their previous educational experiences related to the unjust history of science and engagement with decolonial theory. In the four homework questions in which students could interpret and answer from either a biological or decolonial perspective, 84% of students offered at least one response consistent with decolonial theory. Based on student responses, this three-week module successfully engaged upper-level biology students in decolonial thinking.

Primary image: A blue monkey (Cercopithecus mitis) skull collected from South Africa for the zoology museum collection in 1984. Image courtesy of Phil Myers, animaldiversity.org, Creative Commons.

This module introduces the Dixon equation in the context of understanding nutrient transport through sieve tubes. It is intended for an introductory biology audience.

This module introduces the Poiseuille equation in the context of understanding nutrient flow in plant cells. It is intended for an introductory biology audience.

This is an introduction to bioinformatics using hemoglobin as an example. The worksheets introduce students to resources to explore the DNA, RNA and polypeptide linear structure with a brief introduction to the quaternary structure of hemoglobin.

This is an adaptation using Mol* on the original case written. This case focuses on understanding how a mutation in a cell signalling protein (a kinase) can prevent insulin function and lead to diabetes.

This case focuses on understanding the molecular basis of Anna's sleeping disorder and its treatment. The adaptations addressed question clarity and reformatting to use Mol*.

One of the major learning objectives established by the American Society of Plant Biologists and the Botanical Society of America has students answer the question: How do plant structures enable life functions? This lesson helps students answer this question with a focus on leaf structure and function and how the anatomy and morphology of the leaf optimizes photosynthesis and promotes survival in various environments. Students are first introduced to the primary structures and cell layers of a typical angiosperm leaf, including differences between monocots and dicots, through an interactive mini-lecture. Then, students in groups are asked to design a leaf based on a provided description. These descriptions include a monocot or dicot designation and specific environmental conditions to which the leaf is adapted. After the leaves have been designed, they are collected and redistributed to new groups. These groups are then asked to analyze the leaf they've been given, determine if it is a monocot or dicot, and determine the environment where this leaf would thrive. Finally, students present and defend their findings to the class. This lesson engages students in leaf structure and function as a means to optimize photosynthesis and promote survival and prepares them for future lessons on photosynthesis and evolution.

An appreciation of organismal diversity is a requirement for understanding evolution and ecology, and can serve as a source of amazement and wonder that inspires students to enjoy biology. However, biodiversity can be a challenging subject to teach: it often turns into a procession of facts to memorize and a disorienting list of Latin names. To help engage students in this topic, we developed an activity in which each student contributes to a class "biodiversity tour" of strange and intriguing species. Students in our large-enrollment introductory biology course use the Internet to find a species that interests them and that they think will interest their peers. They research their species and complete a worksheet to report their findings. Then they meet in discussion sections of ~32 students (in person or online) where each student gives a brief presentation about their species using a slide they have prepared, producing a lively, crowd-sourced, rapid-fire nature documentary. The performance for their peers motivates students to find the strangest species possible. Students overwhelmingly reported that this activity taught them something new about life on Earth and increased their interest in our planet's species. Many students also reported that this activity caused them to talk to someone about biology outside of the class and increased their personal connection to the natural world, suggesting that it helped them see the relevance of biology to their everyday lives. This simple activity can enrich an introductory biology course of almost any size.

Primary image: Photos of some of the species chosen by students in Fall 2019.

Algae are a fascinating and diverse organismal group, with global ecological importance, a storied evolutionary history and deep connections to both contemporary and historical human societies. Yet non-experts who teach algal diversity face a lack of examples in many general biology textbooks and the difficulty of generalizing a group that includes many distantly-related lineages that don't share a single common ancestor. This lesson embraces the complexity of algae using a sorting game and tree-building activity. Students work in groups to decide which organisms from a provided set are eukaryotic algae. The class creates consensus statements about what exactly defines organisms as "algae" and self-discover that exceptions exist for every seemingly definitive algal trait. Students then build simple phylogenetic trees and map their organisms across the phylogenetic Tree of Eukaryotes in order to explore the complex evolutionary relationships between the major eukaryotic algal lineages. Student written responses recorded before and after the sorting game indicate students become more nuanced and expert-like in their descriptions of algae. This lesson is an engaging way to introduce students to algae and can be modified for a variety of courses including high school, non-majors biology courses and introductory biology courses.

Primary image: A photo of the phylogenetic trees made by students during the tree-building activity. Photo taken by the author, B. Clarkston.

Critically reading and evaluating claims made in the primary literature are vital skills for the future professional and personal lives of undergraduate students. However, the formal presentation of intricate content in primary research articles presents a challenge to inexperienced readers. During the fall 2020 semester, I introduced a Collaborative Annotation Project (CAP) into my online 400-level developmental neurobiology course to help students critically read eight research papers. During CAP, students used collaborative annotation software asynchronously to add clarifying comments, descriptions of and links to appropriate websites, and pose and answer questions on assigned papers. Student work was guided and assessed using a CAP grading rubric. Responses to anonymous surveys revealed students found CAP helpful for reading the primary literature and the rubric clarified expectations for the project. Here, I describe how I introduced, used, and assessed CAP in my online class, and I share the detailed CAP instructions and rubric.

Primary image: A moment of levity while annotating primary literature. Sample student annotations from the Collaborative Annotation Project. Student #1 compares immunofluorescence data to Christmas lights, an observation appreciated by student #2. Student names have been removed.

Students typically find linear regression analysis of data sets in a biology classroom challenging. These activities could be used in a Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, or Statistics course. The collection provides student activity files with Excel instructions and Instructor Activity files with Excel instructions and solutions to problems. Students will be able to perform linear regression analysis, find correlation coefficient, create a scatter plot and find the r-square using MS Excel 365. Students will be able to interpret data sets, describe the relationship between biological variables, and predict the value of an output variable based on the input of an predictor variable.

This is something Haley and Drew published.

Learning how to code and analyze data in R is an important skill. Olivia Tabares and the Ecological Forecasting Education Working Group created this resource to encourage individuals who are learning R. This infographic provides six suggestions for a mindset that will help you when learning R might get a bit frustrating.

This activity supports instructors in revising materials to incorporate Universal Design for Learning checkpoints.

Three resources for faculty interested in an introduction to Universal Design for Learning (UDL).