Collectively Improving Our Teaching: Attempting Biology Department–wide Professional Development in Scientific Teaching

Owens, Melinda T.; Trujillo, Gloriana; Seidel, Shannon B.; Harrison, Colin; Farrar, Katherine M; Benton, Hilary P.; Blair, Jim; Boyer, Katharyn E.; Breckler, Jennifer L.; Burrus, Laura W.; Byrd, Dana T.; Caporale, Natalia; Carpenter, Edward; Chan, Yee-Hung Mark; Chen, Joseph C.; Chen, Lily; Chen, Linda H.; Chu, Diana S.; Cochlan, William P.; Crook, Robyn J.; Crow, Karen D.; Torre, José R. de la; Denetclaw, Wilfred F.; Dowdy, Lynne M; Franklin, Darleen; Fusé, Megumi; Goldman, Michael A.; Govindan, Brinda; Green, Michael; Harris, H. Elwin; He, Zheng-Hui; Ingalls, Stephen B; Ingmire, Peter; Johnson, Amber R B; Knight, J. D.; LeBuhn, Gretchen; Light, Terrye L; Low, Candace; Lund, Lance; Márquez-Magaña, Leticia; Miller-Sims, Vanessa C.; Moffatt, Christopher A.; Murdock, Heather; Nusse, Gloria; Parker, V. Thomas; Pasion, Sally G.; Patterson, Robert; Pennings, Pleuni S.; Ramirez, Julio; Ramirez, Robert M.; Riggs, Blake; Rohlfs, Rori V.; Romeo, Joseph M.; Rothman, Barry S.; Roy, Scott William; Russo-Tait, Tatiane; Sehgal, Ravinder N. M.; Simonin, Kevin A.; Spicer, Greg S.; Stillman, Jonathon H.; Swei, Andrea; Timpe, Leslie C.; Vredenburg, Vance T.; Weinstein, Steven L.; Zink, Andrew G.; Kelley, Loretta; Domingo, Carmen; Tanner, Kimberly D.

doi:10.1187/cbe.17-06-0106

Cited by 43 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…, 2016 ). This, coupled with the research by Owens et al. (2018) , who showed that professional development for faculty helped them make significant changes in their course design, makes the case for developing professional development courses for lecturers and student advisors to facilitate the explicit teaching and demonstration of SRL skills inside and outside the classroom.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Learning Strategies for First-Year Biology: Toward Moving the “Murky Middle”

Kritzinger

Lemmens

Potgieter

2018

LSE

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Higher education faces the challenge of high student attrition, which is especially disconcerting if associated with low participation rates, as is the case in South Africa. Recently, the use of learning analytics has increased, enabling institutions to make data-informed decisions to improve teaching, learning, and student success. Most of the literature thus far has focused on “at-risk” students. The aim of this paper is twofold: to use learning analytics to define a different group of students, termed the “murky middle” (MM), early enough in the academic year to provide scope for targeted interventions; and to describe the learning strategies of successful students to guide the design of interventions aimed at improving the prospects of success for all students, especially those of the MM. We found that it was possible to identify the MM using demographic data that are available at the start of the academic year. The students in the subgroup were cleanly defined by their grade 12 results for physical sciences. We were also able to describe the learning strategies that are associated with success in first-year biology. This information is useful for curricular design, classroom practice, and student advising and should be incorporated in professional development programs for lecturers and student advisors.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Learning Strategies for First-Year Biology: Toward Moving the “Murky Middle”

Kritzinger

Lemmens

Potgieter

2018

LSE

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“…Cohort A faculty participated in two 5-day summer institutes, three Saturday workshops during each of two academic years, and monthly meetings of faculty professional learning communities (PLCs). The adoption of a 2-year model with embedded PLC's was a response to research showing the efficacy of longer-term, work-embedded interventions over "one-shot" workshops (Henderson et al, 2011;Owens et al, 2018;Wei, Darling-Hammond, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009). Participants included contingent faculty as well as tenure track faculty at the assistant, associate, and full professor ranks at all three institutions.…”

Section: Faculty Development In Stemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Initial implementation of active learning strategies in large, lecture STEM courses: lessons learned from a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary STEM faculty development program

et al. 2020

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Background: A faculty development program was implemented over four years at a 4-year regional comprehensive university and two partnering community colleges. This project was focused on improving student learning in introductory Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) courses at each institution, by helping faculty adopt inclusive, student-centered pedagogies. Survey data were combined with data from classroom videos, faculty interviews, and student questionnaires collected during the first two years of the project to give insight into how faculty initially implemented the theory and strategies they learned and how the students perceived instruction from participating faculty. Results: These data sources were combined to generate four overall themes to characterize our project and guide future projects. These are: (1) implementation of student-centered learning took a variety of forms; (2) quality implementation of student-centered teaching practices lagged behind understanding of the theory behind those practices; (3) the most robust perceived barriers to implementation of student-centered teaching stayed constant, while more moderate barriers were ranked differently from year 1 to year 2; and (4) faculty perceptions of student-centered learning practices were not always the same as students' perceptions. These themes build from the extant faculty development literature in that they are drawn from the unique context of a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional project, and that they represent an "on the ground" perspective from case studies combined with "big picture" findings from surveys. Conclusions: This paper describes the faculty development project, as well as our collection and interpretation of data from surveys and case studies, to ultimately develop the four themes. Recommendations deriving from these themes are also described. These include modeling a variety of pedagogies; adopting realistic expectations for faculty change; institutionalizing faculty development so it can take place over multiple years; being transparent with faculty about known barriers and aligning supports with those barriers; and helping faculty develop strategies for transparency with students about student-centered pedagogies.

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“…TPD efforts can be powerful influencers to improve instructor delivery of evidence-based teaching practices (e.g., Owens et al, 2018;Pelletreau et al, 2018), but only if instructors participate. Therefore, this essay is not focused on the practices or principles of TPD, but rather on how to get instructors (faculty members, postdocs, graduate students) who are currently not motivated to attend TPD, to go to existing sessions and engage in reforming their teaching practices.…”

Section: Tpd In Higher Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many current successful TPD programs overcome barriers to participation by using external incentives, such as department heads personally asking instructors to participate, acquiring funds to financially incentivize participation, or joining in a collaborative publication (Owens et al, 2018;Pelletreau et al, 2018). These strategies can be used to great effect when motivating instructors to attend a specific professional development program with specific objectives and outcomes.…”

Section: Barriers To Participating In Teaching Professional Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leveraging Psychosocial Interventions to Motivate Instructor Participation in Teaching Professional Development

Limeri

Musgrove

Henry

et al. 2020

LSE

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Collectively Improving Our Teaching: Attempting Biology Department–wide Professional Development in Scientific Teaching

Cited by 43 publications

References 46 publications

Learning Strategies for First-Year Biology: Toward Moving the “Murky Middle”

Learning Strategies for First-Year Biology: Toward Moving the “Murky Middle”

Initial implementation of active learning strategies in large, lecture STEM courses: lessons learned from a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary STEM faculty development program

Leveraging Psychosocial Interventions to Motivate Instructor Participation in Teaching Professional Development

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