June 2, we conducted a webinar for TeachT@lk on alternative presentation formats. (Click here for the full recording) The most popular of these is PechaKucha (PK), where students are given 20 slides for 20 seconds per slide for a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds. The slides are auto-forwarded, the emphasis is on very little text, and engaging visuals. There are many versions of this format that can be modified to meet the objectives of your individual courses. The benefits are that students prepare more thoughtful, refined and polished presentations. The format requires students to be creative, focus on key elements, and engage an audience quickly. The challenges include getting students to "buy-in" to this format, by reminding them of the importance of conveying their research to non-scientists, pitch their research to a publisher or a donor. It is also important to give students time to prepare, and faculty are encouraged to do "mid-point" checks to monito...

Today, I'm just sharing an interesting tool that I was introduced to at the "Teaching With Technology Conference" from Maricopa Community Colleges. The excellent presentation and hands on workshop was done by our ASU folks, Celia Coochwytewa, Jinnette Senecal & Steven Crawford from The College of Health Solutions. They gave a demo, and shared a really nice handout "Planning and Preparing for a DIY Presentation" for "scripting" out your video, which is really important to do before recording. They also presented the idea that creating a great video is like telling a story, and the scripting will help professors think through their video. The tool was Adobe Voice , which is a free app available on Ipads and Iphones. I was really pleased at how quickly my table could put together a professional video (about 10-15 minutes), from concept to output. Adobe Voice allows you to narrate images and text to create short videos that can be uploaded to Black...

Today's Guest Blogger is Christian Wright a postdoctoral research scholar in Dr. Sara Brownell’s Biology Education Research Lab 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. His current research focuses 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 measuring what they intend to measure, and 4) exploring how and why instructional strategies differentially impact cohorts of students in undergraduate biology classrooms. He will be starting a position as an Academic Professional i...

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 ...

On Tuesday, April 7, we had a webinar on using eportfolios in the classroom.  Below is a summary of some of the key points and resources: ePortfolios are an archive of materials created by students to showcase their skills and knowledge. They are basically a website with text, videos, images, link and files. There are 3 main types of eportfolios: Personal - includes items from an interest or hobby Showcase - includes information and evidence of skills, often used in interviews to showcase someone's work, or for requesting funds for special projects. Learning - a collection of a students' projects and assignments for a class, used to provide evidence of whether a student met the learning objectives and how they met them. It often includes drafts of assignments to show the process, not just the final product. Students are encouraged to follow a 5 step process to build eportfolios which includes: collecting the data selecting what to showcase reflecting on the w...