Tag: biology
Marja Bakermans: First day activities in a 1000-level biodiversity course
(BB 1045, Biodiversity, 40-80 students) On the first day of class I like to take a few minutes, before I go through the syllabus and discuss the expectations for the term, for students to contemplate the study of biodiversity. First, I ask students for the definition of biodiversity. Next, I explain that each discipline has […]
How Liz Ryder uses active learning on the first day of “Exploring Bioinformatics”
BCB 100X / BB 100X Exploring Bioinformatics and Computational Biology meets twice a week for 2 hours each session. It has a mixed population of about 30 students. Some are BCB freshmen, who are taking the class for their major, and tend to have recent high school biology background and little computer science background. The […]
Natalie Farny’s Use of Daily Minute Papers to Engage Students and Quickly Gauge Understanding
I use a twist on the typical think-pair-share exercise coupled with the minute paper exercise in my 3000-level Human Anatomy and Physiology course (~60-80 students). At the start of each lecture, I put up a short open response question that relates to the material from the previous class and ask the students to spend 1-2 […]
Liz Ryder’s Use of Think-Pair-Share in Neurobiology
I use Think-Pair-Share (TPS) whenever I want students to think actively rather than simply receiving information passively. When I’m presenting something in class, I’ll often ask the class a question rather than simply making a statement, but we all know that this usually only generates responses from a small group of students. So instead of […]
