Biology Education Scholarship

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00:00:07.00 My name is Erin Dolan and I'm an associate professor
00:00:09.12 of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Georgia.
00:00:12.29 I'm also a senior scholar in biology education in the division of biological sciences there.
00:00:18.10 I have kind of an interesting journey from a PhD in neuroscience
00:00:23.12 to studying science teaching and learning
00:00:25.11 and I'm not advocating with this piece that everyone becomes a biology education researcher,
00:00:30.15 but I do hope that you can learn a little bit from my journey
00:00:33.14 and some of the advice I have to offer today about how to get involved in biology education scholarship.
00:00:39.22 So, when I first started this, I thought it would be a scenic drive.
00:00:43.13 I had done research, I had published my work, I thought, you know what?
00:00:48.26 I'll be fine, I'll just need to make this transition to studying humans
00:00:52.05 instead of studying the nervous system of C. elegans.
00:00:55.03 But I found that the road is a little bit different,
00:00:58.09 and there might be some curves that you wouldn't anticipate,
00:01:01.12 and what I'm hoping to do is help you avoid driving right off that cliff
00:01:05.24 to a painful place where you don't have success in this endeavor.
00:01:09.05 So, I'm offering you some tips here today to accomplish that.
00:01:12.12 So, the first thing I would say is, it's all about the question.
00:01:17.16 What do you want to know about how people teach
00:01:20.08 and how your students are learning?
00:01:22.10 So, start with thinking about, what is your question?
00:01:25.01 Not only think about what your question is, but whether that question has been asked before,
00:01:29.28 and is your question worth asking?
00:01:32.08 In other words, does anyone outside your classroom
00:01:35.00 care about the answer to that question.
00:01:37.12 The biggest mistake that I see
00:01:39.21 a lot of biologists who make the transition into doing biology education scholarship make
00:01:44.26 is they don't read. So, my first piece of advice is to read.
00:01:49.05 And then my second piece of advice is to read.
00:01:52.25 And then, you need to do some reading.
00:01:54.20 So, there is a whole lot written already about how people teach and learn
00:02:01.00 and how people study biology teaching and learning.
00:02:03.27 And if you tap that literature, you'll be in a much better position to ask a good question
00:02:08.11 and to ask a question that somebody outside your classroom cares about.
00:02:12.02 So, where do you start in this giant morass of literature?
00:02:15.25 Three resources I think are especially useful for getting your feet wet
00:02:21.11 in thinking about biology teaching and learning are, How College Affects Students,
00:02:25.07 How People Learn, and Discipline-Based Education Research.
00:02:28.22 These two happen to be NRC reports and you can download them for free as PDFs.
00:02:34.15 The next thing you need to think about is what is your goal.
00:02:38.16 So, do you want to share lessons or teaching strategies
00:02:41.12 that you've implemented in your classroom?
00:02:43.06 Do you want to learn what's working in your classroom?
00:02:45.22 What are your students learning and what are they not learning?
00:02:48.04 Or do you want to understand something more broadly,
00:02:50.15 about how people teach and learn biology?
00:02:53.13 Once you have a particular goal in mind,
00:02:56.21 you can narrow your reading to a journal that actually focuses on that goal.
00:03:00.23 For example, I'm the editor of CBE Life Sciences Education.
00:03:04.06 We publish biology education research,
00:03:06.14 as well as classroom-based research and program evaluation.
00:03:09.21 There are other journals that publish a variety of education scholarship,
00:03:14.14 depending on their particular audience.
00:03:17.05 I also wrote an essay on how to navigate this literature
00:03:22.02 because one of the biggest challenges, I think,
00:03:24.08 of getting involved in biology education and scholarship
00:03:26.24 is understanding what you're getting yourself into.
00:03:29.10 The language is different, the way people document teaching and learning is different,
00:03:34.22 and this essay I wrote that's published in CBE Life Sciences Education
00:03:39.09 provides basically a primer on how to go about reading that literature
00:03:44.15 and also a table outlining the different kinds of journals,
00:03:47.28 and the kinds of work they publish.
00:03:50.09 That brings us to your study designs.
00:03:54.17 So, once you have your goal, your question,
00:03:57.17 you can synthesize those together and generate a study design.
00:04:01.14 And the way that you do that is think about what you actually need to know
00:04:05.26 to answer your question in the context of your goal.
00:04:09.13 So, given what you want to know, and why you want to know it,
00:04:12.22 what data do you need to collect? From whom do you need to collect it?
00:04:17.05 And how can you collect it?
00:04:18.28 So, this is one of those hiccups
00:04:22.07 that a lot of people run into when they're first getting involved in biology education scholarship.
00:04:26.28 If you plan to publish your work, you'll need to have approval to conduct human subjects research.
00:04:33.21 So, that means you'll need to contact your institutional review board,
00:04:37.24 or the committees that review human subjects research,
00:04:42.04 and get approval or exemption from needing, for example,
00:04:47.04 informed consent to do the kind of work that you have in mind.
00:04:50.11 I'm not going to elaborate on this now
00:04:53.08 because it's really institution specific.
00:04:55.25 What I recommend doing is finding someone at your institution
00:04:58.24 who has successfully navigated this process and get them to mentor you in doing that.
00:05:05.07 The other challenge a lot of biologists face in making the transition
00:05:09.28 from doing, for example, experimental biology to studying humans
00:05:14.07 is that the methods you may have used as a biologist
00:05:17.05 are not the same methods that you need to study biology teaching and learning.
00:05:22.01 And I'll elaborate on this more in a few minutes.
00:05:25.06 You also may not be measuring what you think you're measuring
00:05:28.23 and again, I'll elaborate on this in a few minutes.
00:05:31.01 So, how do you go about getting the data you need?
00:05:34.25 Or, as I like to think of it more informally,
00:05:37.17 the problem with controlled experimentation in education.
00:05:40.26 So, one of the things a lot of experimental biologists do
00:05:44.25 when they first get involved in biology education scholarship
00:05:47.15 is they say, alright, I'm going to set up a controlled experiment.
00:05:50.05 I'm going to teach one class one way
00:05:52.17 and I'm going to teach another class another way,
00:05:54.11 or I'm going to get a colleague to teach this class,
00:05:57.01 and we're going to compare the outcomes of these two classes.
00:06:00.11 So, this may sound great on the surface,
00:06:03.17 but actually, you may not have identified an appropriate control or a comparison group.
00:06:08.05 Ok. So, just because someone is enrolled in one class or the other
00:06:12.02 doesn't necessarily make them an equivalent group of students.
00:06:16.04 And in fact, one of the things that's clear, for example, in high school,
00:06:20.04 is that students enroll in their science class sections based on the math class they have,
00:06:25.18 or the English class they have, and so you may have a very different group of students
00:06:29.16 in one section of a class versus another.
00:06:32.02 So, that's a, one note of caution.
00:06:35.25 The other note of caution is there may be really important variables
00:06:39.07 that you don't know.
00:06:40.15 So, you may think that these students are essentially equivalent,
00:06:43.19 maybe there's important demographic differences,
00:06:46.03 maybe there's variables we havenâ€™t even discovered so far
00:06:49.16 that you don't know and you can't control for.
00:06:52.05 And finally, you may be able to learn through a controlled experimentation
00:06:57.04 what is happening with your students, but you'll not have any insights into why it's happening.
00:07:01.27 And knowing some what is certainly useful,
00:07:04.25 but the why can be a lot more enlightening.
00:07:07.11 Obviously, the most important thing to consider is that your methods align with your question
00:07:13.22 and the kind of evidence that you want to collect.
00:07:16.01 A couple of methods that biologists turned biology education scholars
00:07:21.22 don't often consider that are really worth looking into
00:07:24.16 are statistical modeling and mixed methods.
00:07:27.05 And what I mean by statistical modeling is really drawing from either the ecology literature
00:07:32.05 or the organizational psychology literature, or the psychology literature in general
00:07:36.07 to think about what are all the variables that are at play
00:07:39.13 What are all the factors that are important to the outcome I want to look at?
00:07:43.29 And try and represent those in a statistical model.
00:07:46.20 The second approach, mixed methods,
00:07:49.10 really takes advantage of both a qualitative and a quantitative approach to your work.
00:07:54.05 And oftentimes, biologists are really comfortable with the quantitative piece,
00:07:58.10 but they neglect the qualitative piece, which can have a lot of value for again,
00:08:02.12 getting at that question of why?
00:08:04.17 And a couple of approaches again we can draw from other disciplines
00:08:07.29 like anthropology, sociology, psychology, and for example,
00:08:13.14 take advantage of ethnographic approaches or case study approaches,
00:08:17.08 that give us more insights into the why.
00:08:19.18 One way to think about this is to go back into the history of cell biology.
00:08:24.06 We made a whole lot of observations of cells
00:08:27.08 and documented what cells look like in all variety of contexts
00:08:31.05 and conditions before we were in a position to propose the cell theory
00:08:34.19 and to do experiments involving cells.
00:08:36.22 Biology education research as a discipline is quite young,
00:08:40.14 and so we're very much still in the observation and documentation phase
00:08:44.05 before we'll be in a position to actually propose theory and actually test that theory.
00:08:48.15 Another hesitation that biologists have is concern about having just one sample.
00:08:55.00 One individual, one class, one institution,
00:08:58.12 but I'd like to draw your attention patient "HM".
00:09:01.18 If you're not familiar with him, he's an individual who had severe epilepsy
00:09:05.01 and had his hippocampus removed on both sides to treat that epilepsy.
00:09:09.05 When he recovered from his surgery,
00:09:11.10 his doctors realized that he completely lost the ability to turn short-term memories
00:09:15.28 into long-term memories.
00:09:17.15 And this one case spawned the entire discipline of learning and memory research,
00:09:23.01 and revolutionized our thinking about how the brain works.
00:09:27.03 Ok, the next thing you need to think about is whether you're measuring what you think you're measuring.
00:09:31.28 Because your participants' perspectives are different from your own.
00:09:35.24 You may ask the greatest survey questions, you may ask the greatest interview questions,
00:09:40.12 but if you think you're asking one thing
00:09:42.19 and your participant interprets your question a different way,
00:09:45.19 that's a big problem.
00:09:47.12 The other thing I'd like you to consider when thinking about what you're actually measuring
00:09:52.22 is that instruments by themselves are not valid.
00:09:55.26 And when I say instrument, I mean everything from a questionnaire,
00:09:59.10 to a survey to a set of interview questions, to a test,
00:10:04.12 those are all considered instruments.
00:10:07.03 And a lot of people talk about whether the instrument is valid.
00:10:09.21 And frankly, an instrument alone is not valid.
00:10:12.29 it's a valid measure of what you are thinking you are measuring.
00:10:16.03 So, for example, I could use a survey with a group of high school students
00:10:19.20 and say, oh, well, you know it's valid with that audience
00:10:23.20 because they understand what I'm asking, they're giving me responses I would expect,
00:10:27.20 but then if I go use it with a group of senior undergraduate students,
00:10:31.23 they may have an entirely different response
00:10:34.10 because they're interpreting the question at a different level.
00:10:37.06 And so, it may not be a valid measure in the same way with that audience
00:10:41.11 that it is with the high school students.
00:10:43.01 And finally, indirect measures may not be good measures.
00:10:47.16 And what I mean by indirect measures is a lot of people ask students to report
00:10:52.02 on the knowledge they have gained, from, for example, a lesson,
00:10:55.25 or the skills they have developed over the course of a lab class,
00:10:59.21 and frankly, students aren't necessarily good evaluators
00:11:03.13 of their own knowledge and skills.
00:11:05.25 Sometimes, you need to ask students, do you feel differently,
00:11:10.09 have you gained confidence, do you feel more like a scientist.
00:11:15.14 But, in other cases, for example,
00:11:17.15 when you're trying to demonstrate that students have developed new knowledge,
00:11:21.08 or gained new skills, those outcomes need to be measured more directly.
00:11:25.22 For example, by watching them perform those skills,
00:11:29.03 or assessing their ability to solve a problem, for example.
00:11:33.02 In a short presentation, it's not possible to give you detailed advice
00:11:36.27 about how to design and conduct your study.
00:11:39.26 But these three resources are a super handy starting place.
00:11:42.29 Discipline Based Education Research: A Scientist's Guide is really written with scientists in mind,
00:11:47.23 Scientific Research in Education
00:11:50.07 talks about the different kinds of research
00:11:52.06 and how you can learn different information from different approaches,
00:11:56.10 and Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design
00:11:58.22 is a really strong introduction to how to do qualitative inquiry.
00:12:04.08 So, you've got your goals, you've got you question,
00:12:08.13 you've thought about how to design your study
00:12:10.22 to give you the data that you want.
00:12:13.00 Now, the key is to make sure that you align all elements of your work
00:12:17.25 to the inferences and conclusions you make.
00:12:20.08 And this is the last place where I see folks run into trouble.
00:12:24.06 First, it's really important to avoid making claims not supported by your data.
00:12:30.03 And it's funny because sometimes you don't recognize that you're even doing it.
00:12:34.11 For example, you might say, in a discussion section of a paper,
00:12:38.07 the students really enjoyed the class.
00:12:40.04 Well, you know what, in education, that's a claim.
00:12:43.02 And that claim needs to be supported by systematically collected and analyzed data.
00:12:47.08 Second thing you need to do is make sure your claims relate to the question
00:12:51.20 that you're actually addressing, so go back to your question,
00:12:55.00 go back to your study design, make sure that your data actually aligns with answering that question,
00:13:01.29 and that your conclusions connect all the way through.
00:13:04.29 Finally, you need to recognize the limitations inherent to your study design.
00:13:08.28 You may have implemented something in your classroom,
00:13:12.03 documented that your students learned, and that would be really fantastic,
00:13:16.08 and helpful to someone else who's trying to teach that same thing.
00:13:19.13 However, that doesn't mean you're in a position to make claims
00:13:23.19 that all students in the country would achieve that same outcome
00:13:26.28 if taught that same lesson.
00:13:28.18 So, you need to make sure that what you claim is actually appropriate
00:13:32.13 to the design and the question you asked.
00:13:35.17 So, this is a lot of work.
00:13:38.17 And we all know that we have limited time in a day.
00:13:41.05 What I have found most useful for learning how to do this kind of work
00:13:45.23 is to find like- minded colleagues and mentors.
00:13:48.22 We all learned how to do science research
00:13:51.07 by an apprenticeship, where we worked with someone
00:13:54.14 who guided us, gave us feedback, was a support system, as well as a critical friend,
00:14:00.22 and I'm not again, trying to convince everyone to become a biology education researcher,
00:14:05.06 but if you want to make strides in contributing to the literature
00:14:08.29 on how people teach and learn biology,
00:14:11.11 I encourage you to tap these two resources.
00:14:13.26 First of all, the Biology Scholars Program,
00:14:16.15 run by the American Society for Microbiology.
00:14:19.11 They teach people how to assess student learning,
00:14:22.20 how to generate a study design
00:14:24.21 and how to transition from a dataset to a final publication.
00:14:29.18 In addition, there's the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research,
00:14:34.18 or SABER. This is a group of people who are studying biology teaching and learning
00:14:40.11 and again, you may not want to be a biology education researcher,
00:14:44.05 but there's a lot you can learn from this community
00:14:46.06 about to make the transition into biology education scholarship.
00:14:50.20 So, I'm hoping that with this piece, I've given you some ways
00:14:56.19 to bridge the gap between where you are now
00:14:59.13 and actually getting your scholarship out to the broader community.
00:15:03.10 Thanks.

This Talk

Speaker: Erin Dolan

Audience:

Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
Student
Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher
Educators

Recorded: November 2013

Talk Overview

Dr. Dolan gives practical advice on transitioning from lab research to biology education scholarship. She provides an overview of important steps such as choosing your question and goal, designing your study, collecting data and interpreting your results, as well as specific information on useful books and journals. This is a great resource for anyone interested in this area of scholarship.

Speaker Bio

Erin Dolan

Erin Dolan is Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Senior Scholar in Biology Education in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Georgia. She is also the editor-in-chief of the CBE-Life Science Education journal. Dolan’s lab investigates science research in an education context, including scalable ways of involving students in research… Continue Reading