In these challenging times, students are experiencing additional stressors exacerbating their anxiety and depression. As instructors who want students to succeed, how can we support our students with anxiety and depression in order to foster belonging and maximize learning? In this week's Resilient Teaching webinar, we talked with SOLS assistant professor Katey Cooper, Ph.D , who shared her research examining what worsens and alleviates anxiety and depression in biology undergraduates. Dr. Cooper discussed two overarching research questions during the presentation that relate to creating inclusive biology learning environments: How does depression and anxiety impact students' affective learning experiences in biology learning environments? What strategies can be implemented to improve the cognitive and affective experiences of students with anxiety and depression in biology learning environments? We began by discussing the percentages of undergraduates who have anxiety and depr...

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...

Most scientists agree that the theory of evolution is a foundational concept in understanding biology, yet it remains rejected by nearly half of the college student population ( Barnes & Brownell, 2018 ). With religious students making up a large percentage of the student body on college campuses across the United States, it is important to consider how the way we teach evolution may impact religious students as they integrate the scientific view of evolution with their religious beliefs. One influential factor in religious student acceptance lies in the debate of whether you can believe in God and still accept evolution. A new study has shown that the ability of religious students to perceive evolution as agnostic – not being able to say whether there is or isn’t a God- rather than atheistic – saying there is no God- increased their comfort in learning and understanding evolution and also increased their acceptance of evolution. Bridges and barriers to being both religious and ...

If you teach a college biology course, you are probably aware that most biology majors are interested in a medical career ( Cooper et al. 2019 ). While many sub-disciplines in biology traditionally cater to the interests of students focused on medical careers, it is common for premed students to think that evolution has nothing to do with medicine. However, that is changing with the rise of a relatively new, but rapidly growing, field called evolutionary medicine (EvMed). EvMed is a discipline that applies lenses and tools from evolutionary biology and anthropology to enrich our understanding of human health and disease. It explores questions such as: Why are we more likely to develop cancer as we age? Why are certain pathologies, like obesity and autoimmune disorders, becoming increasingly common in developed nations? And why have patterns of children’s growth and development changed over the past century? Currently, over half of the major research institutions in the US now offer ...

Photo by  Nathan Dumlao  on  Unsplash Arizona State University's charter statement is a powerful reminder that we are here to create an inclusive learning environment for our students. A group of School of Life Sciences (SOLS) faculty recently affirmed that statement by engaging in an all-day, inclusive teaching workshop in San Francisco, hosted by the American Geophysical Union on Sunday, Dec. 8th, 2019. This event, facilitated by Prof. Kimberly Tanner from the Department of Biology at San Francisco State University and Prof. Jeff Schinske from the Department of Biology at Foothill Community College, engaged our faculty in a number of exercises aimed at helping them adopt practices that promote equity and inclusion. The core of the workshop was built upon two excellent and accessible articles: Structure Matters: Twenty-One Teaching Strategies to Promote Student Engagement and Cultivate Classroom Equity Order Matters: Using the 5E Model to Align Teaching with...

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...

Our Guest Blogger today is Dr. Erin E. Shortlidge. Erin is a postdoctoral research scholar in Dr. Sara Brownell’s Biology Education Research Lab in the School of Life Sciences at ASU. Her Ph.D. is in Biology where she studied the ecology and physiology of moss reproductive success. Her current research endeavors are in understanding the ecology of higher education. As an education researcher she is particularly interested in course-based research and in identifying what factors make for effective and impactful learning environments. What is a CURE? Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences National reports such as Vision and Change (AAAS, 2011) and the National Research Council’s BIO2010 have called for systematic shifts in life science education – including giving all undergraduates the chance to do research. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (or CUREs) are an answer to these calls. In a CURE, research is embedded into the life science laboratory course ...