Resources for teaching ecology

Although immunological research has become increasingly important in recent decades for understanding infectious and immune-mediated diseases, immunological pedagogy at the undergraduate level has lagged behind in reports of evidence-based scholarship. To address the need for a renewed emphasis on immunology education and to describe the current status of undergraduate education in immunology, an online survey of instructors with experience in teaching immunology was conducted. The survey investigated the effects of instructors’ level of teaching experience, target student population, and course components on the emphasis given to certain immunology subtopics in their courses. Instructor teaching experience and current role in teaching influenced the proportion of time allotted to lab techniques, clinical topics, and evolutionary aspects, but type of institution (undergraduate and graduate degree-granting institutions) did not affect course content or emphasis on subtopics. Topics that received the greatest emphasis were the adaptive immune system, the innate immune system, host–pathogen interactions, and molecular mechanisms. Vaccines, hypersensitivity, autoimmunity, and essential immunology techniques were ranked slightly lower, while topics such as evolution, metabolism and antibody purification received the least emphasis. Inclusion of a lab component increased time given to lab-related and clinical topics but did not affect the perceived importance of various scientific competencies. These data describe current curricular practices of instructors who have experience teaching immunology and inform curricular priorities and course design frameworks for undergraduate immunology education.

Please find the link to the publication here.

Helpful resources collected by social justice FMNs that formed from BIOME 2020 working groups.

This is a collection of the modules that we will be discussing during the CREEDS workshop. You can use this discussion space to share questions / comments / and ideas about the modules.

The resources below provide background on concepts central to the CREEDS workshop.

This is a collection of Galapagos centric biology information. 

Communication is among the 21st Century skills our students will need to succeed in their careers. The importance of communicating scientific information within and beyond the classroom has only been heightened by the pandemic. Students can practice communicating scientific ideas with their peers through poster sessions, presentations and other means, which reinforces content knowledge while developing communication skills. These skills can also be applied to communicating outside the classroom (i.e. public presentations, outreach, social media, crowdsourcing).

A complete scientific worldview relies upon interdisciplinary scientific practices. For example, in addition to the clear connections with chemistry and physics, biology has become increasingly quantitative and data intensive, making statistics, programming, and data science an integral part of biology practice.

This collection will contain examples of DEI statments for syllabi, job applications and TandP review along with some rubrics for evaluating some of them

This collection will contain sites with good suggestions on writing learning objective

Bioskills table

This is a set of cases that have been used in UG and K12 settings for setting class rules for group work

This resource will contain links and guides for discussion of sensitive topics