Workshops

The overall goal of this workshop is to encourage educators to adopt the use of online

educational videos in homework assignments in their courses. This strategy promotes a flipped

classroom, which frees up synchronous class time for active learning activities. Educators will

leave the workshop with peer-evaluated homework questions for up to three open access

educational videos. They will also develop a skill set for navigating the educational video

landscape and for selecting videos best suited to their courses and their students. The main

topic of the workshop is how to use educational videos in homework assignments to support a

flipped classroom teaching strategy. The facilitators will guide participants in evidence-based

strategies to maximize the effectiveness of using educational videos in their courses. We will

group educators who teach similar courses, and we will provide opportunities for individual

work, small-group discussion and feedback, and whole-group sharing interspersed throughout

the 90-minute session. Participants will have an opportunity to evaluate each others’ question

sets.

Participant outcomes: 

1. Improved navigation within the educational video landscape

2. Increased use of best practices for integrating educational videos in higher education

3. Ability to browse and select open access videos for use in their teaching

4. Identification of 1-3 educational videos that they can assign as homework in their

course(s)

5. 3-8 peer-evaluated homework questions to accompany each video, to promote active

learning and student accountability

This workshop focuses on development and implementation of structured peer review activities in large biology courses, with the goal to foster participants' development of their own peer review activities for their course. Further, we will offer a model and tips for those interested in treating the project as a discipline based education research (DBER) project. We will offer suggestions for a protocol to follow if the participants choose to collect data from their course regarding the effects the peer review activities . Peer review offers a scalable way to incorporate formative writing assignments into large courses. Peer review activities support learning gains

(Halim et al., 2018; Lundstrom & Baker, 2009; Patchan et al., 2009), and have been implemented in STEM courses (Gunersel et al., 2008; Reynolds & Moskovitz, 2008; Robinson, 2001). In the workshop we will explain our model for structured peer reviews which are

assignments predicated on the idea that biology is a community that has norms, knowledge making practices, and approaches that are apparent to professors (experts), but that not apparent to students (novices; e.g. Bransford 2000; Batzli et al., 2016). The goal of the

structured peer review is to provide students with keys to access biology. Structured peer reviews can deepen student understanding through development of metacognitive strategies, and foster their sense of membership and belonging in biology. During the workshop the facilitators will be switching between presentations, whole group, and small group discussions throughout the entire workshop (see detailed outline below). Participants will be in small groups

based on the types of concepts they want to focus on in the creation of their peer review assignments to foster engagement among participants. Using these engagement strategies participants will leave with (1) having had a discussion of difficult course concepts with other biologists (2) with a structured peer review assignment that they can use in their course (3) a draft of a research question, and (4) a protocol to start with if their goal is a DBER project.

Participant outcomes: 

1. Participants will identify difficult concepts that students struggle with, with a focus on concepts whose application is fundamental to active participation in the community of Biologists.

2. Participants will develop a draft of structured peer review activity that will focus on practice of application of difficult concepts. An activity that can be implemented in their course. The activity will include clear instructions for the creation of the writing task as well as clear instructions for the creation of the review task.

3. Develop an individualized research question that will help the assessment process of the effectiveness of the structured peer review activity in the classroom.

Assessment of student learning is critically important for teaching biology and evaluating our teaching of biology. If we don’t assess what is important, what is assessed becomes important!

Designing assessments that demonstrate what students know and are able to do in biology are key to transforming undergraduate biology. Both V&C and (ESA’s) Four-dimensional Ecology Education (4DEE) Framework work with the idea of multidimensional learning that helps instructors define what they want students to learn (core ideas), what they want students to do with their knowledge (scientific practices), and how they want students to focus their knowledge through multiple lenses (crosscutting concepts). A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas (2012) advocates a similar framework for pre-college students.

Using this framework, researchers (Laverty et al 2016 and Bain et al 2020) are working to transform gateway science courses by moving beyond active learning to incorporate what is known as three-dimensional learning (3DL), the dimensions that are used in concert by practicing scientists and engineers when they apply their knowledge to investigate and reason about phenomena. This workshop will use two protocols developed by these researchers that characterize the extent to which assessments and instruction in introductory biology, physics, and chemistry courses provide opportunities for students to engage with three dimensions.

The resulting tools are useful for both research and teaching professional development. Participants will engage in groups based on the courses they teach or are researching in biological sciences to redesign and develop open-ended and multiple-choice assessment items, use case studies, and apply the criteria of Three-Dimensional Learning Assessment Protocol (3D-LAP). In addition, participants will be introduced to the Three-Dimensional Learning Observation Protocol (3D-LOP) that was developed to characterize instruction in introductory STEM courses. Facilitators will assist participants as they use both protocols for item development and instruction with a focus on scientific practices. These tools can be used to evaluate courses, individual classes, and support research on course transformation efforts.

Please bring a sample exam that you wish to work with as well as the core ideas students should learn in the course. Upon completion of the workshop, you will be able to design and/or characterize any assessment item using the 3D-LAP. Concurrently, you will be able to use the 3D-LOP to evaluation instruction. Both tools are useful for research because they can reliably document how assessments change in a course(s) over time and how instruction changes over time.

Participant outcomes:

• Describe and use the 3D-LAP and 4DEE frameworks.

• Design and characterize any assessment item using the 3D-LAP.

• Apply multi-dimensional learning to modify existing assessment items and build new ones.

• Use the 3D-LAP as a research tool for evaluating assessments for research and teaching.

• Use the 3D-LOP as a research tool for providing feedback to support the development and modification of instructional practice and materials.

This workshop will provide a comprehensive introduction to STEM education research. The workshop will cover key topics and research questions being addressed in the field and discuss potential ways to address these questions using rigorous research designs. The workshop will also review different ways to measure student success outcomes using course-level data, student survey data, and focus group/interview data. These discussions will revolve around both academic outcome measures and non-academic outcome measures (e.g., social-psychological measures that capture student experiences and engagement). Participants will be given the opportunity via small group discussions to outline a research design.

Participants will identify research questions relevant to their interests and goals and be provided with resources to design and implement a research study. 

Public exams (B. L. Wiggins, 2019) attempt to work within the logistical constraints of STEM teaching to allow instructors to apply best practices of education to these onerous experiences as much as possible. The public exam style uses a partial, pre-released exam document to address the following:

• Language Issues: Provide opportunities for students to usefully edit the exam, so as to ensure better use of understandable language and minimizing issues for multilingual students (Abedi & Linquanti, 2012).

• Cognitive Depth: Allow for deeper and more realistic challenges to be used on exams to better match the skills used in science-based careers (Ashford-Rowe et al., 2014; G. Wiggins, 1998, 2011).

• Directing to Core Concepts: Using the principles of deliberate practice, explicitly direct students to the content that is core to the field by positioning that content in obvious and valuable places in the curriculum (Ericsson et al., 1993; John D. Bransford Editor, 20000801).

• Franchisement: Bring students authentically into the process of assessment in order to engender student trust of a difficult process through increased transparency and relevance (Ambrose, 2010; Bang & Medin, 2010; Hurtado et al., 2017; Steele, 1997).

These aspects of summative exams are widely accepted as best practices but are infrequently demonstrated in postsecondary STEM courses (Handelsman, 2006). A partial, pre-released assessment allows for students to still encounter new material during an exam but to have much more agency in their own realistic preparations.

In more recent research work, public exams have show positive impacts on the learning environment and student experience of high-stakes exams. Specifically, students experience significantly better direction towards core concepts, deepened (aka higher-order) thought, and decreased anxiety.

In this workshop, participants will begin the development of a public exam style treatment of material in one of their own courses. Using content from their teaching, they will proceed through a short set of activities to catalyze generation of pre-release-able exam material and the structure for the course to support it. By the end of the 90- minute session, participants will have a strong understanding for how to develop an entire public exam, 1-2 questions pre-written, and a nascent plan for how to communicate their new exam plan to students.

Calls for using evidence-based pedagogies have been expanding in the past decade so as to improve student learning and outcomes. High structure courses are designed to do just that as they prepare students to be actively engaged in the learning process via pre-class content acquisition and assessment, in-class active learning and

problem solving, and after-class review. Significant literature has demonstrated high structure courses in a variety of STEM disciplines to be efficacious over traditional didactic courses as students show increased performance, students feel more belonging, and achievement gaps are narrowed or closed. You will leave this workshop with the knowledge, skills, and references necessary to design your own high structure course from scratch or to modify an existing course into a high structure course. In this workshop, participants will learn the basics of designing or re-designing courses using high structure principles and will develop a template of how to incorporate these principles into their own courses. Additionally, participants will learn introductory methodology for assessing the impacts of their own high structure courses.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to...

1. Explain what high structure courses are and why they are beneficial to student outcomes

2. Discuss best practices for and challenges faced when teaching with high structure

3. Identify resources for use in high structure courses

4. Determine appropriate methods for assessing high structure courses

5. Prepare a draft of a course design or redesign for one of your courses that includes components of high structure

Visualizations are crucial to making meaning of your data, as well as conveying research findings to your audience. However, making the right kinds of graphs and charts to answer your specific research needs can be a challenge, not to mention the need to make them

polished and publication-worthy!

This workshop is a gentle hands-on introduction to using the ggplot2 visualization library in R. The ggplot2 library empowers everyone from novices to experts in R programming to easily generate clean and aesthetically pleasing figures from tabular data. Through a

series of live coding segments combined with pair and group activities, participants will work to create, modify, and iterate upon figures that support a research approach.

Individuals who can work with datasets (variables, matrices, dataframes) and functions in R, but who have never created figures beyond maybe a few base R visualizations (using the plot, hist, barplot functions) will get the most out of this experience.

Please bring your laptop and data from your projects that you want to visualize (if any) to this interactive workshop.

At the end of this workshop, students will be able to:

1. Describe the syntax of the ggplot2 package functions

2. Modify and customize key graph aesthetics like labels and axes

3. Generate several kinds of 1D and 2D plots (e.g. histogram, dotplot, barplot)

4. Save figures to their computer in several formats

5. (time permitting) Customize figures using facets, colors, and themes

In an effort to improve retention of STEM majors, provide a more equitable and inclusive STEM education, and better engage students in their learning process - we have developed a workshop that emphasizes research-based strategies, including the use of backward design to develop and teach high-structure courses.

Participants will:

• Be able to approach course design from a backward design perspective.

• Be able to align class days with learning objectives.

• Be able to align assessments with learning objectives.

• Design at least one unit of their course with learning objectives and assessments.

• Access in-class activities and out-of-class resources for students, all aligned with their course learning objectives.

In an effort to improve retention of STEM majors, provide a more equitable and inclusive STEM education, and better engage students in their learning process - we have developed a workshop that emphasizes research-based strategies, including the use of backward design to develop and teach high-structure courses.

Participants will:

• Be able to approach course design from a backward design perspective.

• Be able to align class days with learning objectives.

• Be able to align assessments with learning objectives.

• Design at least one unit of their course with learning objectives and assessments.

• Access in-class activities and out-of-class resources for students, all aligned with their course learning objectives.