Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Sunita Chowrira (BioFlex BIOL 112 Faculty Lead, Director – Combined Major in Science, Senior Instructor, Botany)
Shona Ellis (BioFlex P.I., Associate Head of Biology, Professor of Teaching, Botany)
Pam Kalas (BioFlex BIOL 121 Faculty Lead, Instructor, Zoology)
Karen Smith (BioFlex BIOL 112, Lecturer, Microbiology & Immunology)
Erica Jeffery (BioFlex Teaching and Learning Fellow)
The first-year Biology Flexible Learning project (aka BioFlex) is being piloted with BIOL 112 (Biology of the Cell) and BIOL 121 (Genetics, Evolution and Ecology), both large enrolment, multi-section courses. In this presentation we will share some of the things we've explored and learned over the first year of the project, and how the trends are catching on. We will highlight the following:
Preparing students for in-class activities
Cross-section collaborations on course activities and project assessment strategies
Implementation of two-stage exams
Exploring the effects on student performance of the assigned order of learning activities in flipped classes
Documenting the attitudes and perspectives of the participants (the learners and the educators) in BioFlex
Partnering with the library on the curation of the digital content
The changing classroom trends and how the trend is catching on.
