scholarly journals Translating Monastic Lessons to Teaching Undergraduate Biology

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Daniel Pierce
Keyword(s):  
Student Learning ◽  
Undergraduate Education ◽  
Career Paths ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Teaching Philosophy ◽  
Undergraduate Level ◽  
Undergraduate Biology ◽  
Central Tenet ◽  
Science Initiative

My participation in the Emory Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI) has afforded me considerable means to enrich my teaching at the undergraduate level. Here, I discuss how I translated lessons learned from working with Tibetan Monks to teaching in a primarily undergraduate institution, including: 1) introducing each course with a challenge to the assumptions made as “Western scientists” 2) using the unique monastic pedagogy of debate to facilitate classroom scholarship, and 3) embracing compassion as a central tenet to engage and empower student learning, which has become the cornerstone of my teaching philosophy. In addition, I brought undergraduates with me to participate in ETSI, and the experience had a profound effect on their educational and career paths. These experiences with the Tibetan monks transformed my teaching and continue to inform how I approach undergraduate education.

Innovating Elite Undergraduate Education through Quality Continuous Improvement

2013 ◽  
pp. 1754-1789
Author(s):  
Kam Hou Vat
Keyword(s):  
Curriculum Reform ◽  
Undergraduate Education ◽  
Open Innovation ◽  
Organizational Context ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Organizational Innovation ◽  
Organizational Transformation ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
The University

This chapter investigates a mechanism of organizational innovation serving to make sense of a maturing university community involving educational executives, academic staff, and students in the occasion of a new campus development, starting in the year 2009 and realizing in the year 2013, under the auspices of a national policy benefiting the long-term development of higher education in the Macau Special Administrative Region (Macau SAR) of China. It is understood that the university as a public institution should not be operated like a business enterprise, running on profit-making initiatives; yet, without the enterprising context, the transformation of the existing infrastructure could hardly be innovated effectively, especially regarding the productivity of its staff, both academic and administrative. As a university with a staff count of less than 1000 and a history of close to thirty years, the University of Macau (UM) is ready to steward an elite undergraduate education marked by a quality learning experience that could become her branding value in the immediate future. The question is how innovatively UM could scale up in this opportunistic growth to excel for the local community. This case study is aimed to investigate from the perspective of a learning enterprise, a reflective way of forward thinking to record the author’s observation and interpretation of what is entailed in this process of upbringing a relatively young university in this age-old city, Macau, famous for its rich heritage of East (Chinese) meeting West (Europeans – Portuguese). Of specific interest is the proper context of open innovation in university governance for organizational transformation. The chapter examines the accountability framework for undergraduate curriculum reform and by treating the electronic transformation (e-transformation) as one of the open innovation strategies, the chapter explores the e-transformation of the university environment, based on holistic concerns of the campus community. The challenge is to identify the organizational context of innovation, which lies in the realm of electronic governance (e-governance), referring mainly to the decisions that define expectations, enable empowerment, and verify performance of the systems in support of community engagement and shared responsibilities in campus development, providing a sense-making perspective to interpret what is entailed in the organizational innovation of the university in this precious occasion of campus relocation. In practice, the lessons learned behind the e-transformation of the learning enterprise should benefit all walks of our local community, including the community of the small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

Process vs. Product

2016 ◽  
pp. 328-336
Author(s):  
Christina Janise McIntyre ◽  
Angela M. Cartwright ◽  
Stacia C. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Action Research ◽  
Student Learning ◽  
Undergraduate Education ◽  
Teacher Candidates ◽  
Classroom Practice ◽  
Classroom Research ◽  
Education Programs ◽  
The Common

The purpose of this case study was to determine if the common practice of Impact on Student Learning (ISL) projects, such as those found in the edTPA and TK20 systems, is adequately preparing preservice teachers to engage in the kinds of action research that are necessary for continuously improving classroom practice. In these projects, teacher candidates administer pre- and post-tests, then determine the efficacy of the lessons between by comparing the scores. While ISL projects provide exposure to assessment for planning, it leaves preservice teachers underprepared for the types of action research that are required for continuously improving classroom practice. Preservice teachers would benefit from additional experiences with research during their undergraduate education programs in order to increase their efficacy, and interest, in classroom research practices.

Pedagogical Characteristics Affecting Student Learning

2011 ◽  
pp. 705-712
Author(s):  
S. Manjit Sidhu
Keyword(s):  
Learning Styles ◽  
Student Learning ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Interactive Multimedia ◽  
Learning Outcome ◽  
Student Characteristics ◽  
Traditional Teaching ◽  
Undergraduate Level ◽  
Student Learning Styles

Student in today’s undergraduate level classrooms often display widely varying characteristics that extremely affect learning outcome. Although student characteristics have been widely studied in the more traditional teaching and learning environments, educators have just begun exploring the applications in interactive multimedia and its associated technological techniques. This article first describes some pedagogical characteristics that could affect students in their learning and than discuss some student learning styles.

Undergraduate Biology Instructors Still Use Mostly Teacher-Centered Discourse Even When Teaching with Active Learning Strategies

BioScience ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (10) ◽  
pp. 901-913
Author(s):  
Petra Kranzfelder ◽  
Jennifer L Bankers-Fulbright ◽  
Marcos E García-Ojeda ◽  
Marin Melloy ◽  
Sagal Mohammed ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Active Learning ◽  
Student Learning ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Strong Positive Correlation ◽  
Biology Teachers ◽  
Student Centered ◽  
Undergraduate Biology ◽  
Dialogic Discourse ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Undergraduate Science

Abstract Reform efforts in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instruction often emphasize student-centered teaching approaches, but relatively little attention is paid to the way STEM teachers use discourse when interacting with their students. In the present study, we examined the instructional and discourse behaviors of biology faculty members (N = 20) teaching in undergraduate biology classes. Although we found that the biology teachers spent most of their time guiding student learning in active learning activities and less time presenting, an analysis of their classroom communicative approaches showed that the participants mostly used authoritative and not dialogic discourse to teach biology content. Similarly, we found a strong positive correlation between biology teachers guiding student learning and authoritative, interactive approaches, suggesting that these teachers mostly asked the students to recall facts or basic concepts rather than asking them to collaboratively build knowledge. We describe the implications of these findings and our results for undergraduate biology instruction.

Call for Manuscripts: Connections: October 2010

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 177
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Student Learning ◽  
Teaching Philosophy ◽  
Content Areas

anuscripts Integration across content areas is the norm in many elementary school classrooms. Whether because of a personal teaching philosophy or because more and more content must fit into the day, teachers are working to connect student learning across the disciplines.

scholarly journals 7: Faculty Development Through Student Learning Initiatives: Lessons Learned

2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-122
Author(s):  
Nancy Simpson ◽  
Jean Layne ◽  
Adalet Baris Gunersel ◽  
Blake Godkin ◽  
Jeff Froyd
Keyword(s):  
Faculty Development ◽  
Student Learning ◽  
Lessons Learned

scholarly journals An Analysis of Reflections on Researcher Positionality

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oluwatoyin Olukiun ◽  
Elizabeth Mkandawire ◽  
Jeri Antilla ◽  
Faten Alfaifa ◽  
Jennifer Weitzel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Central Tenet ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Postcolonial Feminist ◽  
Feminist Epistemologies

Reflexivity is a central tenet of qualitative research. Engaging in self-reflexive praxis allows researchers to identify areas of tension in the research process that need to be further deconstructed. In this paper, we draw on our collective self-reflective experiences as qualitative health researchers whose scholarship is informed by critical and postcolonial feminist epistemologies to offer some guidance on how to approach the concept of insider versus outsider in the research process. Specifically, we analyze recurring methodological tensions related to positionality and outline how they were addressed. The lessons learned from our studies can be instructive to other qualitative researchers

scholarly journals Learning to evaluate – evaluating to learn

2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Lyons ◽  
John Milton
Keyword(s):  
Student Learning ◽  
Action Learning ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Evaluation Framework ◽  
Learning Approach ◽  
Simulation Data ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Collection Methods

This paper reports on the planning and implementation of an evaluation of the final prototype of a physical and computer based simulation in a postgraduate midwifery program. The evaluation framework was designed to reflect the pedagogy of Laurillard’s conversational framework, which had been used to structure the learning experiences in the simulation. Data collection methods and analysis highlighted the themes of discussion, interaction, reflection and adaptation of student learning actions as well as intrinsic feedback - all central to the conversational framework. An action learning approach to evaluation planning and implementation involving an external mentor is described in the following paper including the relationship to the conversational framework, the findings on the student learning environment and the student learning processes and outcomes. The lessons learned about evaluation are also elaborated.

Seizing the Moment: Learning from Humanely Relational and Interdisciplinary Soundscapes

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Elizabeth Rosas
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Undergraduate Education ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Immigrant Students ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Student Group ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The University

Lessons learned from George Sánchez have been at the heart of the work I do with undergraduate students at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Many of them face enormous stress as a result of being (or being related to) undocumented Latina/o immigrants in the United States. During the 2011 Winter quarter, several of those students conferred with me about their intention to invite fellow UCI undergraduate students enrolled in our “Histories of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands” course to join UCI Dreamers. This is an undergraduate student group that supports undocumented immigrant students at our campus as they struggle to finance, complete, and derive full social and intellectual benefit from their undergraduate education. This initiative situated our Chicana/o history course as a productive common ground, a space for this generation of women and men to act in support of each other. Attending UCI Dreamers meetings was not an automatic or random decision but rather the outcome of a series of interactions, discussions, and experiences. Prominent among these was our consideration of music and musical soundscapes that have influenced how life in the US–Mexico borderlands is lived and discussed. 

Teaching about Terrorism: Lessons Learned at SWOTT

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (04) ◽  
pp. 773-779 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory D. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Undergraduate Level

This article discusses some of the challenges and lessons for teaching undergraduate-level courses related to terrorism. The author outlines some of the primary issues that instructors can expect to face, and provides strategies for dealing with several of these challenges. The goal is to relay useful information to those teaching, or planning to teach, courses on terrorism, with the larger hope of strengthening the community of terrorism scholars and possibly developing some best practices for teaching courses on terrorism.

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