Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative
From 2007 to 2017, the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI) at UBC supported departments in their efforts to provide an unrivalled education for undergraduate students. The CWSEI funded embedded teaching and learning fellows at the unit level, achieved system-wide, evidence-based science education by applying the latest advances in pedagogical research, and developed a significant knowledge base of research and resources. The model is being adopted at institutions across North America.
Questions for Biology
This large initiative brings together faculty members from Botany, Zoology and Microbiology and Immunology, UBC Science teaching and learning fellows, graduate students and Skylight expertise. Q4B designs and validates concept inventories on challenging biology concepts, enabling instructors to use inventories to assess areas of student misconceptions (as pre/post tests) and as diagnostic tests. The teams makes the inventories available to colleagues at UBC and other institutions through publications.
Science Writing Resources for Learning
ScWRL brings together students, faculty, educational strategists, science writers, writing centre professionals and tutors to provide students and instructors the resources they need to develop important skills associated with good science writing. Since the onset of the project in 2012, it has focused on developing freely available resources to address the skills that students find especially difficult to master, based on student feedback and rigorous assessment of scientific written work.
Master of Data Science Evaluation
Skylight is working with UBC's Master of Data Science program to evaluate the newly launched professional program. A mid-program survey will collect information on student satisfaction with the MDS Program as well as student perceptions of their learning and learning experiences. The timing of the survey allowed the instructional team to make adjustments for the remainder of the program. An end-of-program evaluation survey is currently being developed.
Learn more about the MDS evaluation
Introductory Statistics Flexible Learning Project
Introductory statistics is taught across UBC and the difficulties students encounter are common across campus. This project brings together experienced statistics instructors from Science, Arts, and Population and Public Health to develop, adapt and use instructional resources that address conceptually challenging topics in introductory statistics. The resources are open, adaptable, consistent in look and feel, and grounded in existing research on learning and statistics.