The ability of students to think abstractly and formally is one of the major challenges instructors have faced over time. This is true across all disciplines but more so in the sciences. Concepts such as molecular bonding, biochemical pathways and cellular communication bring the biggest challenges to students as they require one to think outside of one’s normal schema. Arizona State University Emeritus Professor Anton Lawson , states, Concrete thinking is just regarding the facts. On the other hand, abstract thinking goes down below the facts. While some mental process is involved in abstract thinking, no such effort is evolved in concrete thinking. A person with concrete thinking does not think beyond the facts. They do not have the ability to think beyond a certain limit. Concrete thinkers only have a generalized concept for all things. On the other hand, abstract thinkers have a very specific concept of things. Is there a secret to teaching abstract thinking to learners? One of the...

Depression is a mental health concern for many students and is prevalent among undergraduates at a concerning rate. It has also been shown that underserved and underrepresented individuals in science are disproportionately impacted by depression  ( Turner and Noh, 1988 ,  Eisenberg et al., 2007 ; Jenkins et al., 2013 ; American College Health Association, 2018 ).  If we want to create a more inclusive community in science, we should consider how students’ depressive symptoms interact with their research experiences. However, there is a lack of understanding of the relationship between undergraduate research and students’ depression. A recent study published by the Biology Education Research Lab at ASU begins to explore how depression impacts undergraduate research experiences, as well as how these research experiences affect students’ depression.                      Depressive symptoms affect undergradua...

One of the great things about a project-based course is that students can bring fresh, creative angles to the standard topics in a field. Unfortunately, their contributions often don’t have a lifespan beyond the semester or a good way to reach a broader audience. Google recently revamped its aging Google Sites service, and I found it to offer an effective solution for this challenge in my course this semester, especially in combination with the rest of Google’s cloud services .  If you’re interested in sharing student projects on a public-facing site, I also found some licensing tools from Creative Commons nicely address some important concerns about credit and reuse. Engaging Students As a philosopher teaching in ASU’s School of Life Sciences, I’m always looking for creative ways to engage students with philosophy as an activity – something we can do together as a group -- rather than a bunch of theories disconnected from what they’re studying. I’ve been teaching an upper-level ...

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...

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...