iBiology Scientific Teaching Series

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00:00:07.17 I'm Bill Wood.
00:00:09.03 I'm a Distinguished Professor Emeritus
00:00:12.02 in the Department of MCD Biology
00:00:14.05 at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
00:00:15.26 My name is Kimberly Tanner.
00:00:17.12 I'm an Associate Professor of Biology at San Francisco State University.
00:00:20.24 My name is Malcolm Campbell.
00:00:22.12 I'm a Professor of Biology at Davidson College in North Carolina.
00:00:25.04 So, I believe in this project
00:00:27.24 because in the United States of America
00:00:29.28 we train our scientists to be outstanding researchers,
00:00:32.23 and then most of those young scientists go out and get a job
00:00:35.22 in a college or a university,
00:00:37.17 and they're parachuted into classrooms with virtually no training
00:00:40.14 in how to teach the science they know to other people.
00:00:42.25 I believe in this project because most faculty
00:00:45.26 who go to small colleges or work with undergraduates
00:00:47.23 are thrown into a classroom
00:00:50.17 assuming that, since you were in class so many years,
00:00:52.17 you know how to teach,
00:00:55.02 and that's just not a true statement.
00:00:56.19 So, what we're trying to do is help faculty make that transition
00:00:58.23 from their research training to teaching training
00:01:00.29 so that their students can learn as much as possible.
00:01:04.00 Here's why I'm excited about this project.
00:01:07.00 We're not doing a good job at teaching science to undergraduates,
00:01:11.01 particularly in large courses at the introductory level.
00:01:14.03 In undergraduate science education,
00:01:16.01 we have twice as many people who are leaving the sciences
00:01:18.14 as who leave other discplines, like the humanities.
00:01:20.24 And those who do remain often have
00:01:24.04 only a shallow understanding of the subject matter.
00:01:25.21 They don't retain much of what they learned,
00:01:28.05 and they retain persistent misconceptions about science.
00:01:32.16 And this is largely because of what we teach them
00:01:35.08 -- mostly factual knowledge rather than how to think like a scientist --
00:01:38.21 and how we are teaching them
00:01:40.24 -- not demanding that they master concepts and practice higher-level thinking skills.
00:01:45.23 Most faculty members tend to teach the way they were taught,
00:01:48.23 and so that often involves lectures and test questions
00:01:53.11 that emphasize memorization.
00:01:56.00 In large number of classrooms across the country,
00:01:58.23 we tend to teach in a pretty singular way.
00:02:00.23 We tend to tell people what we know,
00:02:03.02 and assume that they're gonna hear it and listen and learn it.
00:02:05.06 Yet what that does is it sets up a model
00:02:08.12 where only people who learn really well in that one way
00:02:11.09 tend to go on in science.
00:02:12.26 Our society needs more well qualified scientists and engineers.
00:02:15.16 We've got to do better than this.
00:02:17.19 Do we know how to do better?
00:02:19.07 Yes, we do.
00:02:20.21 Decades of research on learning has shown that there are
00:02:23.15 much more effective ways to teach students
00:02:25.17 than the traditional lecture method.
00:02:27.08 Some people call this scientific teaching.
00:02:29.13 All teaching is is brain changing.
00:02:31.29 It's basically neuroscience.
00:02:33.29 And everything that we're going to bring to you in this project
00:02:36.22 aligns really well with what's know from cognitive psychology and psychology,
00:02:39.20 and aligns very well with everything I know as a modern neuroscientist.
00:02:43.14 Teaching is about brain changing
00:02:45.18 and setting up an environment where you, as a teacher,
00:02:47.27 can really drive synaptic plasticity,
00:02:49.26 and that's called learning.
00:02:52.00 If you're watching these videos,
00:02:53.26 what I hope you'll get out of this is the kind of training you got in science,
00:02:57.12 but the training you need for your teaching.
00:02:59.29 It's not intuitive how to teach effectively.
00:03:02.11 It's not intuitive to know how to design a course.
00:03:05.15 So, what we're going to do, through a series of videos,
00:03:07.23 is help you prepare yourself for the classroom,
00:03:09.27 the same way you prepared yourself for the laboratory.
00:03:13.06 We've designed this course to help you master
00:03:16.14 evidence-based teaching methods
00:03:17.25 so that you can optimize the learning of all the students in your classes.
00:03:20.18 We hope that you will join the crusade to make science teaching
00:03:24.00 more effective.

This Talk

Speaker: A. Malcolm Campbell

Audience:

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

Recorded: July 2014

Talk Overview

Course Directors A. Malcolm Campbell, Kimberly Tanner, and Bill Wood talk about the reasons why we need to reform undergraduate biology education and why they got involved in the Scientific teaching Series project.

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Speaker Bio

A. Malcolm Campbell

A. Malcolm Campbell is a Professor of Biology at Davidson College where he has worked for eighteen years. He has been involved in many projects outside of the classroom including being co-editor of CBE Life Sciences Education and founding the Genome Consortium for Active Teaching (GCAT). Continue Reading