The Science of Teaching: Evidence-Based Approaches in Biology Education

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.