Today's post is by Liz Barnes, a PhD Graduate Student in Sara Brownell's Biology Education Research Lab at ASU's School of Life Sciences. Liz found her niche in evolution education research and completed a master’s thesis titled “Professor Attitudes and Beliefs about Teaching Evolution”. After obtaining her master’s degree in the summer of 2014, she began working on her doctoral research, which focuses on how the personal belief systems of individuals influence their perceptions of science and science education. Further, she is studying the ways in which science educators can effectively teach controversial subjects in biology while fostering positive attitudes towards science. Evolution is one of the most important theories in biology and yet one of the most controversial in society (Dobzhansky, 1973; Newport, 2014). This concurrent foundational and controversial nature of evolution makes it one of the more difficult topics to teach in biology. While studen...

Donald Meeks, a student at Arizona State University, and creator of "Go Native" , a video game aimed at teaching people how to speak and interact in different countries, opened our webinar on Tuesday, May 3. His comments helped faculty understand how games impacted the way he learned, and how they have the ability to teach new skills by engaging students in problem-solving and immersive environments. (Click here to see Donald's talk) Faculty went on to review research on games and education, define game "elements", and connect what they are already doing in traditional classes with games. Finally, they reviewed 3 case studies, from a fully converted course from Andy Petroski from Harrisburg University into a game, to some of ASU's courses that are making small changes in course assignments and activities to integrate gaming themes like:   "Spore Controversy" - where students play a "science" game and then discuss what it got w...