Flipping the Classroom

Flipping the classroom!


The idea of flipped classrooms has been around for a few years now, but I don’t think we’ve read a paper yet that explicitly discusses the idea and does research to evaluate the effectiveness.  The authors used this approach in a first-year pharmaceutics course.

Abstract Excerpt:
"Recent calls for educational reform highlight ongoing concerns about the ability of current curricula to equip
aspiring health care professionals with the skills for success. Whereas a wide range of proposed solutions attempt to address apparent deficiencies in current educational models, a growing body of
literature consistently points to the need to rethink the traditional in-class, lecture based
course model. One such proposal is the flipped classroom, in..."

 The Flipped Classroom: A Course Redesign to Foster Learning and Engagement in a HealthProfessions School - McLaughlin et al 2014

Direct URL:  http://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Abstract/2014/02000/The_Flipped_Classroom___A_Course_Redesign_to.17.aspx

Does Instructor Type Matter?

Does instructor type matter?


The results of a survey of students, aimed to find out how students perceived the teaching qualities of professors and graduate teaching assistants.  Some provocative adjectives are listed in the abstract.  Professors:  confident, organized, experienced, strict, hard, boring.  TA's:  engaging, relatable, relaxed, uncertain, hesitant, nervous.  The paper concludes with some ideas for professional development for TA's.  

Abstract Excerpt:
"Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are used extensively as instructors in higher education, yet their
status and authority as teachers may be unclear to undergraduates, to administrators, and even to
the GTAs themselves. This study explored undergraduate perception of classroom instruction by
GTAs and professors to identify factors unique to each type of instructor versus the type of classes
they teach. Data collection was via an online survey composed of subscales from two validated
instruments, as well as one open-ended question asking students to compare the same class taught
by a professor versus a GTA. Quantitative and qualitative results indicated that some student instructional perceptions are specific to instructor type, and..."

Does Instructor Type Matter? - Kendall

Direct URL:  http://www.lifescied.org/content/11/2/187.short

Structure Matters

Structure matters: Twenty-one teaching strategies to promote student engagement and cultivate classroom equity

Introduction Excerpt:
"As a biology education community, we focus a great deal of time and energy on issues of “what” students should be learning in the modern age of biology and then probing the extent to which students are learning these things. Additionally, there has been increased focus over time on the “how” of teaching, with attention to questioning the efficacy of traditional lecture methods and exploring new teaching techniques
to support students in more effectively learning the “what” of biology. However, the aspect..."

Structure Matters - Tanner 

Direct URL:  http://www.lifescied.org/content/12/3/322.short

A Problem with STEM

We have been missing a few updates on the blog, so the next several posts will get us back up to speed.

Abstract Excerpt:
"Striking differences between physics and biology have important implications for interdisciplinary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. I am a physicist
with interdisciplinary connections. The research group in which I work, the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics at the University of Texas at Austin, is converting into the physics
department home for biological physics. Many of my collaborations have been with faculty in engineering. For the past 15 years, I have been codirector of the program at the University
of Texas at Austin that prepares secondary science and mathematics teachers (UTeach, 2012). The future teachers take a course on scientific research I developed and deliver together
with colleagues from biology, astronomy, chemistry, and biochemistry (Marder, 2011). This background naturally makes me an enthusiastic advocate of interdisciplinary education
at the secondary and undergraduate levels..."

A Problem with STEM - Marder

Direct URL:  http://www.lifescied.org/content/12/2/148.short

For our final meeting for this semester, we will be discussing an article by Mike Marder, a physicists, writing for a biologist audience.  He points out that there are significant cultural differences between how science is practiced by physicists and biologists, and this has implications for interdisciplinary education.   Even how we define the  "nature of science" reflects our own disciplines.  For example, those of you who do hypothesis-driven research would be shocked that the word "hypothesis" almost never appears in a physics grant proposal.  And as the article points out, "Students arrive in college with the strong intuition that science requires a hypothesis... other ways of spending time are not science."  (To be clear, the article isn't arguing that one approach is better than the other.)

As always, we will be meeting in Rollins Research Center 452 @ 1p on Thursday December 10th.

Find the paper here 

Paper URL:  http://www.lifescied.org/content/12/2/148.full