Past Seminars

Beyond content, redefining and teaching for broad success in higher education classrooms

Dr. Bryan Dewbury
Florida International University

Friday 5/2

Location: Kavli Auditorium, 3201 Tata Hall

10am - 11am

Host: Dr. Stacy Ochoa (stochoa@ucsd.edu)

Traditional mindsets and approaches to teaching privileges subject matter expertise as the only necessary requirement. Our current understanding of teaching effectiveness demonstrates that addressing the whole student is useful for both academic and social outcomes. In this talk I will make the case for both the value proposition and values associated with this approach with examples from a Biology classroom.

Workshop

Affect matters, identifying and assessing social outcomes in STEM classrooms and beyond

Friday 5/2

Location: 2501 Tata Hall Learning Studio

2:00pm – 3:30pm

In this workshop we will identify specific strategies unique to our context that promote belonging, community and trust in our classrooms. We will create plans to both implement those plants and assess them for their effectiveness.

Centering the Cultural Assets of First-Generation and Latinx Students Pursuing Premed Studies

Dr. Katherine Garcia
UC Irvine

Friday 4/11

Location: Kavli Auditorium, 3201 Tata Hall

10am - 11am

Host: Dr. Ella Tours (etour@ucsd.edu)

Dr. Garcia will share her latest research on cultural assets (family support, language, giving back) and cultural knowledge that shapes career aspirations and impacts retention in premedical studies. Also, this talk will discuss how faculty can leverage cultural assets in the biology curriculum to support firs -generation and Latinx students in succeeding in their biology courses and advancing toward their medical career goals.

Building Connections: The Impact of Learning Pods on Cooperative Learning and Community Building in Large Undergraduate STEM Courses

Dr. Jeffery Maloy
UC Los Angeles

Friday 3/7

Location: 2130 Bonner Halll

10am - 11am

Host: Dr. Melinda Owens (mtowens@ucsd.edu)

Many effective active learning classrooms rely on cooperative learning between small groups of peers. Cooperative learning environments have been shown to significantly boost student participation and deepen understanding, leading to improved learning outcomes. In this seminar, I will discuss the implementation of Learning Pods in large undergraduate STEM courses to foster cooperative learning and community building. Learning Pods consist of small, fixed groups of students that remain stable throughout the course. Learning Pods collaborate on various learning activities, including (but not limited to) in-class exercises, out-of-class assignments, and group exams. I will first present practical strategies for creating and deploying Learning Pods in large lecture settings. I will then share classroom social network data that illustrates student interactions in active learning environments, comparing those with and without Learning Pods. This analysis will highlight how structuring cooperative learning environments in different ways can influence student engagement and performance. The seminar will conclude with an interactive discussion, encouraging participants to reflect on how they can apply these insights to enhance student interaction and engagement in their own courses.

Discussion section structure: how does it impact students?

Dr. Liam Mueller & Dr. Claire Meaders
UC San Diego

Friday 12/6

Location: 3201 Kavli Auditorium Tata Hall

10am - 11am

Host: Dr. Claire Meaders (cmeaders@ucsd.edu)

Discussion sections are scheduled course meetings where a subset of students are led by a teaching assistant (TA), typically in smaller groups where students engage in discussions and problem solving, with goals of increasing access to instructional support and promoting student sense of belonging. However, little work has been done exploring teaching practices used in discussion sections, and the relationships between teaching practices and student engagement and experiences. In this talk we will share how we 1) characterized the designs of discussion sections across a multitude of biology undergraduate courses, 2) determined the relationship between teaching practices and student engagement (attendance and interactions with the instructional team) and student sense of belonging and 3) identified features of discussion sections that students perceive as helpful or unhelpful for their learning. We will share quantitative and qualitative survey results from 4000+ student responses in Spring and Fall 2023. Our findings offer insight into the variations of ways discussion sections are used in large biology programs and provide data to inform future discussion section design.

Leveraging students’ and instructors’ beliefs about students’ abilities to improve biology undergraduates’ outcomes

Dr. Lisa Limeri
Texas Tech University

Friday, October 18, 2024

Location: 1205 Natural Sciences Building Auditorium

10am - 11am

Host: Dr. Melinda Owens (mtowens@ucsd.edu)

Students’ beliefs about their abilities shape their motivations, engagement, responses to failure, and ultimately their academic outcomes. For example, when students believe that their abilities can improve (called a growth mindset), they are more motivated and resilient to experiencing failure. In this seminar, I will describe 3 studies focused on leveraging these effects to improve student outcomes. First, I will describe the development and validity evidence for a new measure of undergraduates’ beliefs about their abilities. This new tool enables researchers to measure these beliefs more accurately and precisely than was previously possible, and my results suggest that measurement error may have obscured true relationships in prior studies. Second, I will describe a randomly-controlled field trial of interventions at two levels to improve student outcomes in introductory biology classes. While prior studies have shown that activities aimed at helping students adopt a growth mindset (student-level interventions) can improve student grades and equity, ours is the first to also explore the potential for instructor messages promoting a growth mindset (instructor-level interventions) to improve outcomes. Finally, I will present results of a qualitative study exploring the mechanisms through which instructors communicate their beliefs about students’ abilities in the classroom through their words, actions, and policies. These results shed light on how instructors can shape their classroom climates to support positive beliefs and students’ resilience.

Workshop

Instructional strategies to foster a supportive classroom climate

Date: Friday 10/18

Time: 3:00 – 4:30pm

Location: 2130 Bonner Hall

Abstract: Students’ beliefs about their abilities influence their motivation, engagement, and how they bounce back from setbacks, like failing an exam. Lisa is a PI on an NSF-funded project to examine how we can improve student outcomes in introductory biology classrooms with targeted messaging to help them think of their abilities as improvable with effort and feedback. Lisa will discuss what students believe about their abilities, how these beliefs impact their outcomes, and scalable, low-cost things we can do as instructors to help students overcome challenges.

From Learning Objectives To Exam Questions: Examining How Changes In Framing Can Influence Students’ Attitudes and Learning

Dr. Jeremy Hsu
Chapman University

Thursday, January 18, 2024

Location: 1205 Natural Sciences Building Auditorium

10 - 11am
Q and A until 11:30am

Hosted by: Claire Meaders (cmeaders@ucsd.edu)

Learning objectives, quizzes, and exams are common across STEM courses. However, there has been little work done examining how students think about learning objectives and how the wording of such learning objectives may influence students’ attitudes, motivation, and learning in class. Similarly, quizzes and exams are ubiquitous in STEM courses, but there has also been a paucity of past work investigating how the framing of such questions may impact students’ reading and processing of the question as well as their attitudes. In this talk, we will explore how students conceptualize learning objectives and discuss ways instructors can use learning objectives to support student learning. We will then explore how different wordings of the same learning objectives and exam questions can play major roles in influencing students’ attitudes and motivations and examine how instructors can apply these findings to their classes.

Scalable Success: Use of Near-Peer Mentors to Promote STEM Student Academic Performance

Dr. Eduardo Gonzalez and Dr. Mike Wilton
University of California – Santa Barbara

Friday, December 8th, 2023

Location: 3201 Tata Hall, Kavli Auditorium

10 - 11am
Q and A until 11:30am

Hosted by: Katie Petrie (kpetrie@ucsd.edu)

Mentorship is an effective strategy to promote postsecondary STEM student academic success and retention. However, as undergraduate STEM enrollment continues to increase, faculty-student mentorship at large, public universities is not a scalable approach. Here we describe the positive impacts of near-peer mentorship approaches which leverage upper-division biology students to provide support to first- and second-year majors at the University of California.

Achieving Institutional Change in Teaching Practices

Dr. Carl Wieman
Nobel Prize Laureate, Physics (2001)
Stanford University

Friday, November 3, 2023

Location: 3201 Tata Hall, Kavli Auditorium or Zoom

Zoom Meeting ID: 951 7535 7612

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Navigating a Changing Teaching Landscape: Approaches and Advice From BioSci Faculty

Keefe Reuther, Melinda Owens, Justin Meyer

Tuesday, November 7, 2023

Location: Muir Biology Building, Room 1138

9:30 AM - 10:50 AM

Melinda Owens and Justin Meyer will share approaches and perspectives from flipping their courses in fall 2023. Keefe Reuther will guide you through step by step workflow to quickly modify and generate assessment questions that can easily be uploaded to Canvas.

Imagining New Possibilities in STEM: Ecosystem Impacts on STEM Identity

Dr. Desiree Forsythe
Postdoctoral Fellow
Chapman University

Friday, May 19, 2023

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM (A Q and A discussion with Dr. Forsythe will take place immediately following the talk.)
Host: Claire Meaders

Ungrading: A Primer

Dr. Celeste Leander
Professor of Teaching
Department of Botany
University of British Columbia

Thursday, May 4, 2023

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM (A roundtable discussion with Dr. Leander will take place immediately following the talk.)
Host: Lisa McDonnell

"It's completely erasure": Exploration of experiences of transgender, nonbinary, gender nonconforming, and questioning students in biology courses

Dr. Sarah Eddy
Assistant Professor
Biology and the STEM Transformation Institute
Florida International University

Friday, April 21, 2023

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM (A roundtable discussion with Dr. Eddy will take place immediately following the talk.)
Host: Katie Petrie

Examining Undergraduate Thinking in Science using AI-based Evaluation of Constructed Responses

Dr. Kevin Haudek
Associate Professor, Teaching
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Michigan State

Friday, March 24, 2023

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM (A roundtable discussion with Dr. Haudek will take place immediately following the talk.)
Host: Claire Meaders

What Inclusive Instructors Do

Dr. Tracie Addy
Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning
Center for the Integration of Teaching, Learning and Scholarship Lafayette College

Friday, March 10, 2023

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM (A 30 min extended Q&A discussion with Dr. Addy will take place immediately following the talk.)
Host: Claire Meaders

Stimulating Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning: the Effects of Getting Students to Monitor Learning

Dr. Jenny Knight
Associate Professor
University of Colorado, Boulder

Friday, January 20, 2023

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM (A workshop and discussion with Dr. Knight will take place immediately following the talk.)
Host: Jack Reddan

Aligning Teaching Values and Assessment Practices with Scalable Specifications Grading

Renée Link, Ph.D.
Professor of Teaching
University of California, Irvine

Friday, November 18, 2022

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (A workshop and discussion with Dr. Link will take place immediately following the talk.)
Host: Melinda Owens

Challenges, Obstacles and Considerations for Establishing STEM Diversity Programs at Predominately White Institutions

Starlette M. Sharp
Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Friday, October 28, 2022

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (A roundtable discussion with Ms. Sharp will take place immediately following the talk.)
Host: Melinda Owens

Using Religious Cultural Competence in Biology Education

M. Elizabeth Barnes, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Biology Department
Middle Tennessee State University

Friday, May 27, 2022

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (a roundtable discussion with Dr. Barnes will follow)
Host: Katie Petrie

Students may learn (even) more than they think!
Effortful deliberate practice in the classroom

Louis Deslauriers, Ph.D.
Department of Physics
Harvard University

Friday, April 29, 2022

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (a roundtable discussion with Dr. Deslauriers will take place immediately following the talk.)
Host: Katie Petrie

How Undergraduates Use Metacognition to Learn on Their Own and in Small Groups

Julie Dangremond Stanton, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Cellular Biology
University of Georgia

Friday, March 4, 2022

10:00AM – 11:00AM (a roundtable discussion with Dr. Stanton will take place immediately following the talk.)
Host: Claire Meaders

Learning from Orchestras: Implementation of an Anonymized Faculty Search

Enrique M. De La Cruz, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry
Yale University

Friday, January 21, 2022

10:00AM – 11:00AM (a roundtable discussion with Dr. De La Cruz will follow)
Hosts: Stanley Lo and Melinda Owens

Challenges and opportunities for students with disabilities in evolving learning environments: active learning, online instruction, and undergraduate research

Logan Gin, Ph.D.
School of Life Sciences
Research for Inclusive Science Education (RISE) Center
Arizona State University

Friday, November 12, 2021

10:00AM – 11:00AM (a roundtable discussion with Dr. Gin will take place immediately following the talk, until 11:30AM)
Host: Melinda T. Owens

Strategies for Teaching Inclusively as the Pandemic Continues

Kelly A. Hogan, Ph.D.
STEM Teaching Professor
Department of Biology
Associate Dean of Instructional Innovation
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Friday, October 15, 2021

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (a roundtable discussion with Dr. Hogan will follow)
Host: Claire Meaders

But is it really “just” science? Engaging critical race theory to unpack racial oppression with implications for Black student science engagement

Terrell Morton, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
College of Education
University of Missouri

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

9:00 AM – 10:00 AM PT
Host: Stanley Lo
In conjunction with the Society for the Advancement in Biology Education Research (SABER) Striving for Racial Justice in Academic Biology Seminar Series

The importance of interaction-oriented practices in enhancing online student success

Di Xu, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Education
University of California, Irvine

Friday, December 4, 2020

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PT (a roundtable discussion with Dr. Xu will follow)
Host: Melinda Owens

The influence of humanizing education to broadening participation in STEM careers

Mica Estrada, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Institute for Health & Aging
University of California, San Francisco

Thursday, February 4, 2021

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PT
Host: Corinne Moeller

Revisiting the classics: Integrating cognition into traditional models of formative assessment

Erika Offerdahl, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Molecular Biosciences
Washington State University

Friday, March 5, 2021

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PT (a roundtable discussion with Dr. Offerdahl will follow)
Host: Lisa McDonnell

Systemic disadvantages for LGBTQ professionals in STEM

Erin Cech, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor and Associate Graduate Director
Department of Sociology
University of Michigan

Thursday, March 18, 2021

9:00 AM – 10:00 AM PT
Host: Stanley Lo
In conjunction with the Society for the Advancement in Biology Education Research (SABER) Striving for Racial Justice in Academic Biology Seminar Series

Diversifying Both Ends of the STEM Pipeline Requires Institutional Change

Susan Wessler, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor
Neil and Rochelle Campbell Presidential Chair for Innovation in Science Education,
Department of Botany and Plant Sciences,
University of California, Riverside
Home Secretary, US National Academy of Sciences

Friday, May 7, 2021

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PT (a roundtable discussion with Dr. Wessler will follow)
Host: Susan Golden