 | |
| Heather Bergan-Roller |
In one episode of the The Simpsons, Lisa explains to Homer that the Chinese have the same word for crisis and opportunity. “Crisitunity!” Homer exclaims.
D’oh!
Even if “crisitunity” is not a real English word, the concept still applies to 2020.
The crisis of COVID-19 has hospitalized and killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Yet it offered research opportunities to CISLL affiliate Dr. Heather Bergan-Roller.
Bergan-Roller, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at NIU, researches how instructors teach biological sciences and how it can be taught most efficiently.
“I use science to understand how to teach science most effectively,” explains Bergan-Roller.
Bergan-Roller became interested in the science of teaching when she was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Nebraska, researching how students think about complex cellular systems.
“I also studied how science is communicated to others, and how students value science communication,” elaborated Bergan-Roller.
Effective teaching became front and center when educators and students suddenly scrambled to adapt to virtual instruction in March of 2020.
Thinking quickly, Bergan-Roller and three other NIU researchers, Nicole LaDue (Department of Geology and Environmental Geosciences and CISLL affiliate), Nicole James (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry), and Rachel Rupnow (Department of Mathematical Sciences) examined how tenured faculty in the Department of Chemistry adjusted to “going virtual”.
Headed by Rupnow, the project was recently published in the Journal of Chemical Education.
“We were interested in what changes did the faculty make to their courses and why,” explained Bergan-Roller.
They found that faculty often kept instructional practices from face-to-face teaching, but they also modified their teaching on the basis of student needs. For example, they recorded their lectures, modified lecture notes, and inserted polls in order to ascertain whether their students were learning. They also explored tools within Blackboard, struggled with how best to assess student learning, and sought advice from peers within their department and the experts in the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning.
One recommendation from the study is that teaching units would benefit from an in-unit community of individuals who are invested in teaching and knowledgeable about various tools and pedagogy. Because each discipline has its own “personality” of pedagogy, some tools work better in some disciplines than others.
“Laboratory courses are very difficult to teach online,” remarked Bergan-Roller. “You can’t smell or hear the chemical reactions over the web. Some reactions produce a crackle sound, which does not communicate well over the web.”
Bergan-Roller also had another “crisitunity” moment in 2020, namely, the heightened focus on race and equity arising from the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I want to make instruction effective and a safe place for all students. We need to know how instructors achieve these goals.”
One goal of this research is to find ways to inclusively maintain students’ interest in biology and facilitate their learning of biological phenomena.
“Many students are surprised to learn that race is not a biological construct, it’s created in a social context,” explained Bergan-Roller. “There are biological reasons why we differ in how we look, but they are genetically small and superficial.”
Bergan-Roller, along with some members of the Inclusive Environments and Metrics in Biology Education and Research (iEMBER) Network, plans on surveying hundreds of undergraduate biology instructors across the United States this Summer.
“We want to know the instructor’s point of view on how to teach inclusively. I want to know what they do and why they do it,” remarked Bergan-Roller.
We at CISLL applaud Bergan-Roller’s and her NIU colleagues’ research. We hope that opportunities abound and crises retreat.
And perhaps “crisitunity” should be an English word, after all.
About the author: Keith Millis is on CISLL’s executive board and is a Professor of Psychology at NIU.
D’oh!
Even if “crisitunity” is not a real English word, the concept still applies to 2020.
The crisis of COVID-19 has hospitalized and killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Yet it offered research opportunities to CISLL affiliate Dr. Heather Bergan-Roller.
Bergan-Roller, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at NIU, researches how instructors teach biological sciences and how it can be taught most efficiently.
“I use science to understand how to teach science most effectively,” explains Bergan-Roller.
Bergan-Roller became interested in the science of teaching when she was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Nebraska, researching how students think about complex cellular systems.
“I also studied how science is communicated to others, and how students value science communication,” elaborated Bergan-Roller.
Effective teaching became front and center when educators and students suddenly scrambled to adapt to virtual instruction in March of 2020.
Thinking quickly, Bergan-Roller and three other NIU researchers, Nicole LaDue (Department of Geology and Environmental Geosciences and CISLL affiliate), Nicole James (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry), and Rachel Rupnow (Department of Mathematical Sciences) examined how tenured faculty in the Department of Chemistry adjusted to “going virtual”.
Headed by Rupnow, the project was recently published in the Journal of Chemical Education.
“We were interested in what changes did the faculty make to their courses and why,” explained Bergan-Roller.
They found that faculty often kept instructional practices from face-to-face teaching, but they also modified their teaching on the basis of student needs. For example, they recorded their lectures, modified lecture notes, and inserted polls in order to ascertain whether their students were learning. They also explored tools within Blackboard, struggled with how best to assess student learning, and sought advice from peers within their department and the experts in the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning.
One recommendation from the study is that teaching units would benefit from an in-unit community of individuals who are invested in teaching and knowledgeable about various tools and pedagogy. Because each discipline has its own “personality” of pedagogy, some tools work better in some disciplines than others.
“Laboratory courses are very difficult to teach online,” remarked Bergan-Roller. “You can’t smell or hear the chemical reactions over the web. Some reactions produce a crackle sound, which does not communicate well over the web.”
Bergan-Roller also had another “crisitunity” moment in 2020, namely, the heightened focus on race and equity arising from the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I want to make instruction effective and a safe place for all students. We need to know how instructors achieve these goals.”
One goal of this research is to find ways to inclusively maintain students’ interest in biology and facilitate their learning of biological phenomena.
“Many students are surprised to learn that race is not a biological construct, it’s created in a social context,” explained Bergan-Roller. “There are biological reasons why we differ in how we look, but they are genetically small and superficial.”
Bergan-Roller, along with some members of the Inclusive Environments and Metrics in Biology Education and Research (iEMBER) Network, plans on surveying hundreds of undergraduate biology instructors across the United States this Summer.
“We want to know the instructor’s point of view on how to teach inclusively. I want to know what they do and why they do it,” remarked Bergan-Roller.
We at CISLL applaud Bergan-Roller’s and her NIU colleagues’ research. We hope that opportunities abound and crises retreat.
And perhaps “crisitunity” should be an English word, after all.
About the author: Keith Millis is on CISLL’s executive board and is a Professor of Psychology at NIU.
No comments:
Post a Comment