Creating a New Breed of Biology Education Researchers

Introductory undergraduate biology courses often fail to truly engage students in the subject matter, a problem that sometimes causes students to switch out of biology majors. The tra­ditional, lecture-only curriculum has already been shunned in middle-school and high-school science classrooms, but this lesson structure persists in the postsecondary domain. Although some professors are using innovative teaching methods in college biology classrooms, they may lack the knowledge, skills, and support to research other promising learning methods, write up their findings, and create a culture on their campuses that emphasizes evidence-based learning in the classroom. The inability of biology faculty to share successful teaching methods inhibits the spread of effective practices and impedes the change in campus culture that undergraduate biology education requires if students in the field are to be retained. Many biology faculty members are committed to the use of effective and proven teaching methods, but they lack a strong background in education research. These educators have little extra time because of their professional obligations, yet they still want to create a successful learning environment for students in their classrooms. In an effort to improve teaching in the microbiology classroom, the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) created the Scholars-in-Residence program in 2005 to introduce biology faculty to the scholarship of teaching and learning. The scholarship of ...
Source: Eye on Education - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news