Professional Development for Student-Centered Instruction

“Transforming how we TEACH is good, BUT transforming what we expect students to LEARN is better.”

Speaker: Dr. Diane Ebert-May, Department of Plant Biology, Michigan State University

“My seminar is designed to facilitate a data rich discussion related to assessment of courses and curricula. I will use specific examples drawn from research done on large introductory biology courses at Michigan State University, and will connect our research to two national frameworks that are guiding transformation in courses and curricula across institutions, Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education (2009) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS, 2012). These two reports and our recent paper (Cooper et al 2015) describe transformed courses as those that focus on a few core concepts rather than long lists of topics and emphasize scientific practices in which all students should become proficient. In our courses, we integrate research models into teaching approaches by bringing into our classrooms the core scientific practices desired for all students, such as working with data, building, testing, and refining models, developing arguments, and communicating and collaborating across disciplines."

Diane Ebert-May provides national and international leadership for discipline-based biology education research that integrates life sciences and social sciences. Ebert-May’s research group developed and tested a model for professional development workshops based on learner-centered teaching. Ebert-May leads FIRST IV, an NSF-funded professional development program to help 201 postdoctoral scholars create and teach their first introductory biology course in preparation for their academic positions. Her book, Pathways to Scientific Teaching (Ebert-May and Hodder eds, second edition in prep), is based on student-centered learning, inquiry-based instructional strategies, assessment and research. Her recent awards include the US Professor of the Year Award for Michigan from the Carnegie Foundation/CASE (2011) and the Education Award from the American Association for Biological Science (2012).

This presentation is part of the Evidence-Based Teaching in STEM Seminar Series