Skylight hosts a variety of special events and workshops designed to foster community and professional development in science education.
Previous Events
October 2025
How Active Learning Can Present Challenges for Students with Marginalized Identities
When: Wednesday, October 1, 2025 | 10:00am-11:00am
Where: Michael Smith Laboratories (MSL), Room 102 (map)
Presenter:
- Dr. Sara Brownell, President's Professor, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University
Description:
Students learn more and fail less on average with active learning compared to traditional lectures, which has led to widespread recommendations to replace traditional lecture with active learning. However, active learning changes the dynamics of the classroom and creates more opportunities for interpersonal interactions, which can inadvertently disadvantage students with marginalized identities. In this talk, Sara will present a decade of research that has uncovered unintended consequences of active learning for students with marginalized and minoritized identities, including LGBTQ+ students, students with anxiety, students with depression, students with disabilities, and religious students. Importantly, this work does not call for a return to traditional lectures but rather showcases the need to be thoughtful in how we implement active learning in ways that are inclusive across a variety of identities.
February 2025
Should an LLM Grade Your Students' Exams?
When: Wednesday, February 26th, 2025 | 12:00pm-1:00pm
Where: Earth Sciences Building (ESB), Room 5104 (map)
Presenter:
- Dr. Vered Shwartz, Assistant Professor (Department of Computer Science, UBCV)
Description:
Evaluating and grading students’ work is a difficult and time-consuming task. The general-purpose nature of large language models (LLMs), along with their vast knowledge across a wide range of domains, positions them as a strong candidate for automatic assessment of free-text answers. However, there are various limitations pertaining to the reliability of LLMs as evaluators and fairness issues that arise from LLM-based automated assessment. This talk will discuss several factors that need to be considered when deciding whether and how to utilize LLMs for this task.
January 2025
Panel Discussion on Universal Design for Learning in the Faculty of Science
When: Wednesday, January 15th, 2025 | 9:30am-11:30am
Where: Earth Sciences Building (ESB), Room 5104 & 5106 (map)
Panelists:
- Caitlin Donnelly, Lecturer (Department of Botany, UBCV)
- Charissa Fung, Lecturer (Department of Zoology, UBCV)
- Firas Moosvi, Lecturer (Department of Computer Science, UBCV)
- Jaclyn Dee, Lecturer (Department of Botany, UBCV)
- Lindsay Nelson, Educational Field and Laboratory Coordinator (Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, UBCV)
- Louise Longridge, Lecturer (Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, UBCV)
- Stephan Koenig, Science Education Specialist (Department of Computer Science, UBCV)
Description:
Join us for an engaging panel discussion on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles and how to integrate them into your teaching practices. This panel will feature past participants of the UDL Fellows Program, who will share their experiences and insights on how UDL can enhance learning for all UBC Science students.
During the panel, our speakers will discuss:
- UDL projects and practices in the Faculty of Science
- Successes and challenges in applying UDL principles
- Recommendations and resources for instructors
This event offers a unique opportunity to learn from your colleagues, ask questions, and participate in meaningful conversations about how to create a more inclusive and accessible learning environment at UBC.