Biology CCTT Cohort Workshops & Activities

Two cohorts of 20-25 biology educators will be recruited to participate in a  year-long professional development experience in which they create and publish a collection of  Core Concept Teaching Tools (CCTTs) to address the core concepts across scales and sub-disciplines. Each cohort will participate in two in-person summer workshops: a CCTT development workshop at the beginning of their experience and a CourseSource writing workshop at the end. They will form a community of educators who continue to collaborate online between the workshops during the academic year when they implement and evaluate the CCTTs. 

Academic Year: Implementation, Evaluation, and Revision of CCTTs
Each CCTT will be implemented and evaluated in at least two undergraduate biology courses at different institutions, in addition to the developer’s own, in the fall and spring semesters following the summer development workshop. Instructors and students in the courses will be asked to complete online evaluation surveys (administered by the evaluation team) to report their perspective on whether using the CCTT supported their teaching or learning and to provide feedback and suggestions for improvement. The feedback from the fall semester implementations will be shared with authors in the winter to guide revisions between semesters. Revised CCTTs will then be tested in a different set of courses in the spring semester. Spring semester evaluation data will be shared with the authors in early summer to make final revisions in preparation for the summer CourseSource writing workshop.