Discussion Questions for Teaching Undergraduate Science
This winter in Journal Club we read a book: Teaching Undergraduate Science: A Guide to Overcoming Obstacles to Student Learning by Linda C. Hodges. In each chapter of this very practical and accessible book the author draws on the scholarship of teaching and learning to present strategies for helping students learn in a different situation: in class, from texts, from problems, from tests, etc. We look forward to exploring these topics with you, so please join us!
The book is available as an e-book from the UO library or online as a print book.
Week One (1/10):
Foreword, Preface and Chapter 1: Introduction
Discussion questions:
- The author argues for the “apprenticeship” teaching style/perspective. What does this mean? What can we do to cultivate an apprenticeship approach in classes?
- The author talks about some key ideas about learning and how they could fit into the apprenticeship model.
Define as a large group:- Uncovering prior knowledge
- Providing practice and feedback
- Motivating students
- Helping students think about their thinking
- Creating positive beliefs about learning
- Cultivating self-regulated learners
- How do you deal with this as a teacher, or how have you seen this addressed in your classes? Share examples of good practice and bad practice.
- Have you struggled with any of these yourself as a student?
Week Two (1/17):
Chapter 2: Helping Students Learn During Class
Discussion questions:
- Make a concept map of the relationship between the strategies. What are they? How do they work? How do they relate to each other?
- Add to the concept map how you can use the key ideas to support the seven strategies.
Week Three (1/24):
Chapter 3: Helping Students Learn from Text
Discussion questions:
- Why is it so hard for students to learn and be motivated from texts, especially science texts? What does the author say? What do you already do to support students?
- A suggestion for helping students process texts is to give them “guiding questions” that help them identify the important ideas. What guiding questions would you give someone to help them process this chapter?
- Which of these strategies would you consider implementing in your own class? Why and how?
- How are self-explanation and elaborative interrogation different?
As an icebreaker this week, we talked about what we’re all reading outside of Journal Club. Here’s our group’s list of reads:
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World – and Why Things are Better than You Think
Seveneves
Emergence
Weather Woman
Misogyny: The World’s Oldest Prejudice
Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
WTF
What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained
The Left Hand of Darkness
Mysteries of the Worm
All the Light We Cannot See
Oryx and Crake
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Death on the Nile
Aspirin: The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug
The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking through Science
Week Four (1/31):
Chapter 4: Helping Students Learn, and Learn from, Problem Solving
Discussion questions:
- Produce an example of what your strategy would look like. Include the class, content area, an example problem, the framework/setup, and the product/demonstration.
How is the strategy done? In class/out of class? What does the instructor do/provide? What so students do? - What did you like in what you saw? What can you imagine using yourself?
Week Five (2/7):
Chapter 5: Motivating and Helping Students Learn on Their Own
Discussion Questions:
- We would have liked more detail about many of the methods and resources mentioned in the chapter, so we’d like you to look up one of the resources and report back on: What is found there (examples)? What can you find at the site that you could imagine using in your class?
Week Six (2/14):
Chapter 6: Helping Students Learn from Tests and Assignments
Discussion Questions:
- Do you do anything to help students overcome test anxiety?
- How can a rubric help students learn from an assignment or test?
- If you wanted to make a rubric for a problem set, what might it look like? What categories, what would the descriptions be, etc?
- How have you seen tests used to promote student learning rather than just a summative experience?
Week Seven (2/21):
Special Guest: Jenny Dauer, Asst. Prof. of Science Literacy, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Reading:
Feinstein, N. (2011). Salvaging science literacy. Science education, 95(1), 168-185. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.20414
Discussion Questions:
- How does Feinstein ultimately define science literacy? How does this mesh with/map onto the SLP’s definition? UNL’s definition?
- According to Feinstein, science literacy is promoted by letting students pursue the science that is interesting to them. How could we involve students in determining what science would be useful to know? How would this work in the context of a university science class?
Week Eight (2/28):
Chapter 7: Helping Students Learn from Laboratory Work and Research
Discussion questions:
- What is your experience in mentoring or teaching students in labs? What are your expectations for students to learn in labs (classroom or research lab experience)?
- How do you get students to take pre-lab and post-lab (beyond the ah-ha science) seriously?
- In what ways can we provide more structure for students to have the most successful lab experience possible? We’re thinking about goals or outcomes for labs, communication or other skills students can learn. Anything that’s related to being a successful scientist that might not directly be the content of the lab.
Week Nine (3/7):
Chapter 8: Helping Students Learn to Write Like Scientists
Discussion questions:
- In what ways have you received peer feedback or have your students give each other peer feedback on their writing? How do we give feedback beyond being an editor?
- How can we model the revision process?
- For the most part, it’s graduate students who are engaging with and grading the writing our science students do. How can we help them learn to foster student writing skills?(e.g. comment as a reader, not a grader/editor, focus on revision, not editing, etc.)
Week Ten (3/14):
Chapter 9: Making Choices About What and How to Teach in Science
Discussion questions:
- How do we help students connect with our teaching choices?
- What are you taking away from the book? Any final reflections?