Prof Karen Burke da Silva was the keynote speaker at Day 1 of the 2017 First-Year Science Educators' Colloquium, held in Wellington. Her topic:Transforming large first year science classes: A comprehensive approach to student engagement. Currently at Flinders University, she's been instrumental in setting up an 'integrated teaching environment' that's seen a drop in withdrawals, […]
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engagement & experiences in undergraduate science education
At FYSEC2017, Gerry Rayner led a session called "Undergraduate science education in the 21st century: issues, needs, opportunities". Gerry kicked off by commenting that education has a greater impact – on students, teachers, and the wider society in which education systems are embedded – when people work together across a range of disciplines. What are […]
Continue readingdoes science blogging still matter? yes. yes, it does.
That's the premise of an article in Nature (Brown & Woolston, 2018), which I discovered via the excellent Debunking Denialism on Facebook (& if that's not a good example of how various social media are interlinked, I don't know what is). Since mine is a science blog, obviously I was interested in the Nature narrative. Brown […]
Continue readingwhat is feedback, and do universities do it well?
I've just received a reminder that I need to set up the paper & teaching appraisal for my summer school paper. This is a series of items that students can answer on a 1-5 scale (depending on how much or how little they agree with each statement), plus opportunities to give open-ended responses to a […]
Continue readingconsidering the transition between school and university
I'm sitting in the sun waiting for the 2017 First-Year Science Educators' Colloquium (FYSEC) to kick off- & it's somewhat embarassing to realise that I hadn't done anything with some of the notes I took at last year's event. However, much of the discussion then is still just as relevant today, & in fact many of […]
Continue readingmore on laptops in lectures
This is a cross-post from my other blog over at Talking Teaching. I type much more quickly than I write (some would argue, also more legibly). But when I'm taking notes in meetings, I do it with a (very old-fashioned) fountain pen & notebook. The reason is that this makes me filter what I'm writing, […]
Continue readinghuman evolution – new discoveries, & how do we accommodate them in our teaching?
What follows is loosely based on a workshop I ran at this year's Biolive/ChemEd secondary science teachers' conference. (A most excellent conference, by the way – kudos to those organising & presenting.) I've added a bunch of hotlinked references. Back when I was in 7th form (or year 13 ie a rather long time ago), […]
Continue readingprofs, publications, & social media
A while back, my Twitter feed brought up a post with the intriguing title "Prof, no-one is reading you". The article kicks off with the following provocative statement: Many of the world's most talented thinkers may be university professors, but sadly most of them are not shaping today's public debates or influencing policies. Now, them's […]
Continue readingfreedom of opinion has its place, but this phd thesis goes too far
One of today's big stories, in the blogosphere and elsewhere, is of the University of Wollongong's decision to award a PhD to a thesis that promotes a strongly anti-vaccination take on the policies and science relating to immunisation. Fellow NZ scibloggers Helen Petousis Harris and Grant Jacobs have already commented on it, and over on Respectful Insolence […]
Continue readingdoes powerpoint make students stupid and professors boring?
This is a cross-post from Talking Teaching. The author of this article certainly thinks so. Under that header, he continues: Do you really believe that watching a lecturer read hundreds of PowerPoint slides is making you smarter? I asked this of a class of 105 computer science and software engineering students last semester. Well, first up, […]
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