- The 24 April 2009 issue of Science magazine
includes an article by Pfund et al. about the Summer Institute
and its impact. More
- Summer Institute teams have come from institutions coast to coast: from Florida to Alaska,
from Hawaii to New England. See a participant map to learn which
institutions have sent teams to the Summer Institute.
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2004 Overview
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES
Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in Biology
Monday, August 16 to Friday, August 20, 2004
Overview and Agenda
2004 Co-Directors:
Jo Handelsman, University of Wisconsin
William B. Wood, University of Colorado
Location:
The Pyle Center
University of Wisconsin
702 Landgon Street
Madison, WI 53706-1487
Overall Strategy
The goal of the Summer Institute for Undergraduate Biology Education is to
transform biology education at research universities by improving
classroom education and attracting more students to research. We intend
to train a new generation of faculty by introducing them to a scientific
approach to teaching that reflects the way we function at researchers.
The target group is novice and experienced instructors of introductory
biology courses with high enrollments. We will select from the applicant
pool 18 pairs of faculty from 18 different research universities. The
Institute will include reflective writing, planning, reading, researching,
and talking about teaching methods and philosophy, and will involve a
mixture of presentations by expert teachers and development of new
teaching materials by the participants in small groups. The outcomes will
be a set of teaching materials that all of the participants will all test
at their home institution in the ensuing academic year.
One set of materials that participants obtain from the Summer Institute
will be used in the introductory biology courses and the other will form
the basis for a seminar in mentoring directed toward graduate students and
postdocs who are supervising undergraduates in the research lab. The
mentoring materials are well-developed and tested, making it easy to offer
with little preparation or time commitment (they were developed for eight
1-hour sessions with the students). The participants will be asked to
arrange for someone to offer the mentoring seminar (as a formal course or
an informal seminar) at their home institutions to students of any type -
they maybe graduate students and postdocs or faculty colleagues. The
materials developed for the introductory biology course and the mentoring
seminar will be accompanied by assessment tools that the participants will
administer or arrange for our evaluator to administer. The results of the
initiatives from all of the campuses will be shared with the participants
and published. The participants will be offered a fellowship to
facilitate the implementation of these new teaching initiatives.
Participants are required to:
- Teach introductory biology courses
- Come in teams that include one junior and one senior member
- Write a short teaching philosophy before arriving at the SI
- Implement three modules developed at the SI into their introductory
biology course during the '04-'05 academic year (modules might be a lesson
substituted into an existing syllabus)
- Offer, or recruit a colleague to offer, a seminar in mentoring for
graduate students, postdocs, or faculty
- Administer, or enable our evaluator to administer, assessments of
the introductory biology units and mentoring course
- Stay for the entire SI
Participants' campuses are required to:
- Provide funds for participants to travel to the SI
- Support and encourage the activities of the participants in their
departments and campus-wide
- Ensure that the activities associated with the Summer Institute are
treated favorably by tenure committees
The National Academies Summer Institute will provide:
- Lodging, food, and all other meeting expenses for participants
- A $1,500 fellowship to each participants to facilitate their
teaching (up to two per campus)
- Resources, instructors, and evaluators to help participants develop
and evaluate teaching materials
- A listserv for all participants to communicate as they implement the
teaching materials
- Internet access for all participants throughout the SI
- Data about the implementation at the end of the academic year
following the SI
Structure of SI:
- Talks on research about learning and various teaching methods will
be presented
- Work will be in small groups
- Inquiry-based learning will be modeled by conference structure:
participants will establish their teaching questions and hypotheses,
design or find active, inquiry-based learning tools, plan their
implementation, and determine how to assess student learning
- Participants will write pre/post teaching philosophy (1-2
paragraphs)
- Participants will write pre/post mentoring statement (1-2
sentences)
- Participants will be accountable for implementing and evaluating
course materials at home institutions and reporting findings to SI for
publication
Participants will work in groups of 6. Groups will be organized around
large principles of biology (genetics, cell biology, ecology, evolution,
etc). Each member of the group must be able to teach (or influence the
teaching of) this topic in the introductory course and groups will be
assigned before the SI based on syllabi provided by participants. The
groups will tentatively choose a specific concept (natural selection,
genetic drift, energy transduction, etc) within their broad principle for
which they will develop a "teachable unit," which should be 1-3 lectures
or a lab. The materials they develop may be collected from the Internet,
teaching books or journals, or developed during the workshop. The groups
will modify the materials to fit their courses (incorporating
modifications tailored to each campus), discuss their context in the
course, and design assessment tools to evaluate learning.
Components of the Teachable Unit:
- Teaching objectives
- Summary of biology content
- Course context
- Approach to teaching
- Assessment of learning
After the SI:
- Participants will implement at three of the teachable units
developed at the SI
- Each topic identified will be taught by traditional methods
(whatever those are) at 9 sites and with the tool developed at the SI at 9
others
- Students at all sites will take a common pretest and posttest using
a small number of conceptual questions
- Participants will also coordinate or recruit a colleague to offer
the mentoring seminar (this can be a small-scale process - they might even
do it with their own graduate students who are mentoring undergraduate
researchers or team up with a colleague to do it for two labs of graduate
students)
Group facilitation
The SI staff will work with the groups, helping them hone their teachable
units to be feasible units, finding materials, and providing advice. The
staff will include the Steering Committee.
Monday, August 16
During day -- Lab visits and seminars
with UW researchers (as
available)
5:30 pm -- Registration
6:00 pm -- Dinner
7:00 pm -- Scientific Teaching - Jo Handelsman: Overview of Summer
Institute; Brief
Introductions
7:30 pm -- Keynote - Bruce Alberts
8:30 pm -- Opening Mixer
10:00 pm -- Adjourn for the evening
Tuesday, August 17
7:00 am -- Round Table Discussion/Breakfast
9:00 am -- Introductions - Jo Handelsman: Introduce participants to
each other;
Understand their expectations for the Summer Institute; Understand context
in which they teach; Form groups (pre-assigned); Group brainstorming:
What's your teaching question?; Small groups: Generate a hypothesis about
your teaching question
10:30 am -- Break
10:45 am -- Scholarship of Teaching - Bill Wood: Findings,
approaches,
resources; Introduce the idea of approaching teaching with the same values
as we do research; Summarize key research indicating success of active,
inquiry-based learning; Introduce structure and goals of workshop
12:15 pm -- Lunch - Peter Spear
1:30 pm -- Presentations of Instructional Materials - Christina
Matta and Whitney Robertson: Provide
examples of instructional materials developed by young teachers; Set
standard of scholarly approach to instructional materials (setting
objectives, searching the literature, using assessment, scope); Engage
participants in active, inquiry-based learning; Case study,
compluter-based learning, lab
3:00 pm -- Break
3:30 pm -- Groups Initiate Projects: Tentatively choose topic for
developing a teaching activity; What is your teaching question, challenge
or hyopthesis?; Design a teachable unit to address your question,
challenge, or hypothesis. What type of teaching method will you use
(lecture, lab, other)?
4:30 pm -- Introduce Resources - Sarah Lauffer: Participants will
have access to
the Internet and an extensive library of books and articles on teaching
and assessment; An overview will be provided and then participants will
surf to gain an overview of the types of materials available to them.
5:30 pm -- Free Time
6:00 pm -- Dinner - Kenneth Wesson
8:30 pm -- Group Work: Develop project
Wednesday, August 18
7:00 am -- Round Table Discussion/Breakfast
9:00 am -- Assessment - Diane Ebert-May: Introduce central idea of
assessment - build
assessment into instructional materials; Introduce range of assessment
tools - in class, computer-based, pre-test/post-test, etc.; Include
demonstration.
10:30 am -- Break
10:45 am -- Active-Learning in Lectures - Randall Phillis:
Introduce active lectures,
use of small group work, problems, audience response technology; Includes
time for discussion
12:15 pm -- Lunch
1:30 pm -- Inquiry-Based Labs - Jo Handelsman and Sarah Lauffer:
Demonstrate and discuss use of
inquiry-based labs and process of converting cookbook labs to
inquiry-based labs.
3:00 pm -- Break
3:15 pm -- Group Work
6:00 pm -- Dinner
7:30 pm -- After-dinner gathering / Group Work
Thursday, August 19
7:00 am -- Round Table Discussion/Breakfast
9:00 am -- Active Learning Strategies - Robin Wright
10:30 am -- Break
10:45 am -- Group Work
12:15 pm -- Lunch with UW faculty: Mentoring Undergraduate Research
Projects - Graham Hatful
1:30 pm -- Group Work: Complete projects.
3:00 pm -- Break
3:15 pm -- Group Work: Plan presentation.
4:30 pm -- Implementation: Panel discussion on implementation and team
teaching.
6:00 pm -- Dinner
7:00 pm -- Mentoring - Jo Handelsman, Chris Pfund, Zakee Sabree,
Melissa Christopherson : Case study demonstration; Discussion of
course; Presentation of materials.
Friday, August 20
7:00 am -- Round Table Discussion/Breakfast
9:00 am -- Group Presentations: Groups #1 and 2 demonstrate and
discuss use of teaching materials.
10:30 am -- Break
10:45 am -- Group Presentations: Groups #3 and 4 demonstrate and
discuss use of teaching materials.
12:15 pm -- Lunch
1:30 pm -- Group Presentations: Groups #5 and 6 demonstrate and
discuss use of teaching materials.
3:00 pm -- Break
3:15 pm -- Implementation and Assessment: Discuss implementation of
each project at all sites and expectations for project evaluation and
peer-review
5:30 pm -- Conclusion of Institute sessions
6:00 pm -- Dinner
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