Students enrolled in Dr. Julie Reynolds’ Writing in Biology (Bio299), are writing honors theses. To graduate with distinctions in biology, they need signatures from three additional readers: their research supervisor, their faculty reader, and the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Therefore, the work produced is more public than most college courses. Student often get conflicting feedback and feel torn between competing authorities. One way to address this dilemma is to make the feedback that the students receive visible to all parties, and to encourage students to explain their writing choices in response to that feedback. Dr. Reynolds used Voicethread to make readers comments and students writing choices visible.

In this course, Dr. Reynolds also used Jing to see if it is an efficient and effective approach to communicating both faculty and peer feedback. Here’s an example of a student commenting on another student’s project:

The third part of this project used video to help students gain a better understanding of how scientists read scientific papers. Students interviewed their faculty and recorded these interviews using FlipVideo. The videos were shown in class so students could see the range of expectations that readers have when they read scientific papers.   Here’s an example:

In Dr. Julie Reynolds‘ Biodiversity course, students used Flip video cameras to create a video for public audiences in their community to explain the value of local biodiversity. Students were required to identify their audience, investigate the audience’s assumptions about biodiversity, and created a compelling argument for why that audience should care about local biodiversity. The videos were peer reviewed. Students were able to make more compelling arguments when their work had an authentic audience.  Here’s an example of a student produced video about Lemurs and biodiversity:

Alison Hill, Biology

As a fellow in CIT’s Flexible Learning Spaces Fellowship (2008), Alison Hill participated in meetings, mini-workshops, and other fellowship activities centered around the concept of ‘flexible learning‘ – specifically focused on the uses of the technology and space arrangements made possible by Duke’s new teaching and learning space, the Link.

Course overview

During Fall 2008, Hill taught the Biology of Aging course (a non-majors biology course) in Link Classroom 5. The following lists Hill’s core goals of her course:

• Students will apply scientific knowledge and methods to evaluating scientific claims presented in the mass media.
• Students will be able to distinguish between correlations and causality as this relates to claims about health and aging.
• Students will understand general concepts in genetics, genomics, molecular and cellular biology by applying these concepts to the biology of aging.
• Students will come to recognize how biology directly intersects many of the important social, ethical and policy issues they will be confronted with in their lives.
• Students will articulate their perspectives on biology and society by public speaking and writing.

Julie A. Reynolds, Mellon Instructor in Writing and Biology

Project summary

Julie has found that students with very little prior knowledge of science can participate in authentic scientific research, can be trained to collect meaningful scientific data, and can develop a better understanding of ecological processes and the interconnectedness of nature through these experiences. Building on this success, she is expanding a current project to engage members of the community in an authentic scientific study. She is developing educational activities around invasive species at the Eno River State Park, and training the public to be involved in monitoring these species. She plans to include the general public as well as service groups at high schools, colleges, and in the community (such as through botanical societies) that would encourage sustained participation in scientific research.

The goals of this project are to:

1. Increase public understanding of threats to the environment and to biodiversity
2. Educate the public about the scientific method
3. Foster a sense of environmental stewardship within the community
4. Monitor the spread of invasive plant species within the state park

Visitors to the Eno River State Park will be trained to monitor invasive plants using GPS and gathering data in Google Earth. This project at the Eno River could serve as a pilot to be adopted throughout North Carolina.

See Julie’s Citizen Scientist website for more.

This project is funded by Duke Center for Science Education.

Alyssa Perz-Edwards, Lecturing Fellow, Department of Biology

Project Description:

Alyssa Perz-Edwards uses her class time in Cell Biology to work with students on critical thinking and problem solving skills, while the students learn terms and facts outside of class. She motivates students from a wide variety of backgrounds to quickly learn a large amount of complex information, and to apply this information, by using Team Based Learning and a tablet PC. Students come to class prepared for tests taken individually and then repeated as a team. The tests are graded immediately, so that Alyssa can use her tablet PC for just-in-time teaching to address student misconceptions revealed by the tests. The tablet PC allows her to sketch and label during class, so that she can immediately address student requests for more explanation and context during class. The students work in teams for rest of class time to apply their new knowledge to solve problems in Cell Biology using skills they will need if they are to be successful in medical school.

Alyssa teaches cell biology in a six-week summer academic enrichment program that offers freshman and sophomore college students intensive and personalized medical school preparation in the Summer Medical and Dental Summer Program at Duke University School of Medicine.

Julie Reynolds, Mellon Instructor in Writing & Biology
David Shiffman, Instructor, Biology

Project Description

Julie Reynolds and research associate David Shiffman have compared ArcGIS and Google Earth for undergraduate research projects. ArcGIS is a powerful program, but is very expensive and difficult to learn. Google Earth has fewer analytical tools, but is free and very user friendly. Using data generated by student research projects, David compared the capabilities of both programs.

ArcGIS is undeniably a more powerful tool, but it has several drawbacks. The expense and difficulty of learning ArcGIS makes it impractical for short-term, small-scale projects. Google Earth, in contrast, is powerful enough for small-scale projects such as undergraduate research projects and large mapping project that do not require quantitative analysis.

These results are being prepared for publication, and will be used to guide future undergraduate research projects.

Below, left image was created in ArcGIS, image on the right is the same data in Google Earth.

Project start date: 4/1/2008
Funding awarded: $1800

Julie Reynolds, Mellon Instructor in Writing & Biology, Arts & Sciences

Project Description

Julie Reynolds and her colleagues Paula Lemons and Ahrash Bissell are developing a methodology for designing valid and reliable, discipline-specific, critical-thinking questions and grading rubrics that simultaneously measure student’s content knowledge and specific critical-thinking skills (e.g., application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation). Using this methodology, they are generating questions and grading rubrics, and beginning to use these questions to gather data on student learning of both content and critical-thinking skills.

To share their work and allow others to contribute, they are looking for a web-based tool that can manage this type of collaborative assessment design and modification. This grant funded an assistant to assess web sites that might be suitable for a critical thinking assignment repository. The ultimate goal is to find an appropriate on-line tool to build a scholarly community around critical thinking assignments and rubrics for grading. Criteria used to assess websites:

1. free
2. user friendly
3. contains a downloadable database of critical-thinking assignments related to the teaching of biology
4. allows for collaborative writing of critical thinking assignments
5. claims to measure critical thinking in student responses
6. actually can measure critical thinking in student responses

Of the 13 software or websites assessed, none met the criteria. Investigated software/websites included: CPR, FLAG CDT, LE3, InsightAssessment, CornellCT, 2Mpower, SmartPrim, Theseus, Trackstar, DevelopingCTSkills, Critical Thinking Co, Writeboard, and CLAQWA.

The assistant suggested designing a new system to meet the needs of the project.

Project Started: August 20, 2007
Funding: $2000

Sherryl A Broverman, Associate Professor of the Practice, Biology, Arts and Sciences

Project description

Dr. Broverman participated in a Faculty Fellows group focused on teaching large classes. This fellowship group discussed a number of techniques, described in McKeachie’s Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers and Angelo and Cross’ Classroom Assessment Techniques.

Broverman has been teaching very large (200-300) lecture courses and was concerned that students were passive learners. She also wanted to include more formative assessment projects to benefit both the students learning and her understanding of their needs. She was particularly interested in group work (beyond “think, pair, share” using PRS), portfolios, and peer education to promote students abilities to synthesize and make connections.

For the Spring 2006 Fellows program, she explored concept maps, one minute summaries, and structuring team based presentation assignments in preparation for teaching a large class. She found the self-assessment by the students, where they summarized concepts of a lecture or presentation, helpful in understanding what students were learning at various points in the course. Students also felt that the creation of a concept map would be helpful when structuring a paper, but thought the process of creating them was difficult. Broverman restructured her presentation assignments, based on her work in the past, to be more manageable in a 300 student course.

Project start date: January 1, 2006
Funding awarded: $1,000

Alyssa Perz-Edwards, Lecturing Fellow, Biology, Arts & Sciences

Project Description

Perz-Edwards created digitized movie clips that her students used to explore experimental methods and embryo development. The students accessed the streaming video through Blackboard, which provided the students with a better understanding of processes they used to plan and execute experiments during lab sessions.

The availability of video outside of class allowed the instructor to use class time for discussion and other activities. Students also collected video and time lapse data in the class to use in presentations describing their work.  A poster describing the project is available.

Project Started: 5/1/2004
Funding awarded: $2500