Guest Blogger: René Tanner, Life Sciences Librarian Wikipedia , the free, open, online encyclopedia has the potential to share information and knowledge with people around the world. However, the use of Wikipedia in higher education is often discouraged because, in general, encyclopedias are not adequate sources for college-level research. Also, anyone can edit Wikipedia, so outdated and erroneous information may be present;   But what if, the tables were turned and instead students were encouraged to be contributors and given credit for editing and improving Wikipedia?   What might they learn and how might their critical thinking skills be improved? Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, would like more experts to be part of the project. Wales notes that often enthusiasts develop entries of personal interest and that someone with a deeper understanding would add nuance and improve the quality of articles greatly. However, the number of scientist/editors in Wiki...

joomag example from Dr. Michael Angilletta In this week's TeachT@lk Webinar we discussed the benefits of redesigning your syllabus to get students interested in the course from the first day. We shared the requirements of the traditional syllabus, and what Syllabus "Bloat" is. We showed how to create interactive elements with hyperlinks, videos, images and visual layouts that highlight important information to students. We demoed examples in technologies ranging from the simple PDF file, to the more complex Joomag. We shared templates from CLAS and Digication that help make the transition a bit easier for busy faculty. We even spent some time sharing syllabi and giving input on how to make them better! Below are the links to the resources shared during the webinar: Adobe Connect Recording : https://connect.asu.edu/p9n0ypybjdj/ PowerPoints : https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12594701/Final_IS_Slides.pdf Populr Example : http://page.teachingwithoutwalls.com/sy...

Today's Guest Blogger is Christian Wright, an instructional professional in the School of Life Sciences as ASU. He has a Master’s in Education and a Ph.D. in Biology where he studied the interaction between physiological condition, environment, and foraging behavior of Gila monsters in Dr. Dale DeNardo’s lab in the School of Life Sciences at ASU. Additionally, he was a postdoctoral research scholar in Dr. Sara Brownel l ’s lab in the School of Life Sciences at ASU. His current research is a continuation and extension of research he worked on with Dr. Brownell in her lab and focuses specifically on 1) generating a validated general biology programmatic assessment, 2) exploring potential biases in undergraduate biology classrooms as well as examining mechanisms and interventions that may explain and alleviate said biases, 3) evaluating assessments used by undergraduate biology instructors and by biology education researchers to determine if these measurement tools are indeed...

How do you feel now that the semester is almost over?  Our final TeachT@lk Webinar for 2015 was a terrific way to wrap up the year. So often we are overwhelmed with grading, and just submit grades and walk away, never thinking about the course until we teach again. This is not an effective way to end the semester, and loses some great opportunities to reflect on your course and make improvements for the next time you teach. Dr. Peter van Leusen shared 7 Action Tips for wrapping up the semester.  They included: Collect student feedback Get student permissions for exemplary work Archive important information on your course Document the experiences from student interactions and reactions to assignments Get additional feedback from peers, TAs and Instructional Designers Prioritize and make a plan for any changes Take action now to prepare for next semester Participants went through this worksheet , and took time to write comments about their courses for each of ...

Dr. Sarah Dalrymple ran an exercise in her BIO530 Scientific Teaching course, that had some excellent tips for all our ASU instructors. Below is her summary of that activity. This semester in the graduate-level Scientific Teaching course (BIO 530), we have talked a lot about active learning pedagogies and how to successfully implement them in the classroom. In a recent class, the graduate students considered hypothetical classroom scenarios involving challenges that often come up when instructors try to implement active learning. For this post, I chose one scenario and presented the notes from our class discussion about possible solutions to the challenge. Davis Blasini, Latoya Campbell, Keith Crenshaw, Ryan Davila, and Tiffany Lewis came up with and compiled most of the ideas listed below. Scenario: You know that it is important to check for understanding at multiple times during a class period, but every time you ask if anyone in the class has questions, no one ever says anyt...