The objective of this project is to provide structured professional development opportunities that engage undergraduate biology faculty in exploring contemporary teaching practices. Biology, microbiology, anatomy and physiology faculty participate in twelve workshops emphasizing collaborative curriculum development and in project-based online group work. Professional development activities are built around the effective use of existing and publicly accessible digital library materials; networked computing and communications technologies; and E-science resources.

This project, conducted jointly by the University of Pittsburg and Beloit College, engages biology faculty in cyberlearning experiences and prepares them to help their students take advantage of cyberlearning opportunities. This work provides insights into the ways that science educators take advantage of new knowledge-sharing tools to make their own learning accessible, and how enhancing the collective understanding in professional teaching communities informs the use of these same tools in classrooms.

This project addresses challenges faced by community college science educators by helping biology faculty enhance science teaching and learning by effectively using publicly available materials and tools. By partnering with teaching societies and digital libraries that actively reach out to two-year faculty the project has access to workshop attendees and large numbers of teachers who participate in online faculty development projects.

Project Report

The objective of the Cyberlearning at Community Colleges (C3) project of the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium was to provide structured professional development opportunities that engage undergraduate biology faculty in exploring contemporary teaching practices. Over the four years of funding, we offered fourteen official workshops and established thirty-five working groups. The workshops were held in association with national meetings of the American Society for Microbiology, the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society, the National Association of Biology Teachers Two Year College Division, and the Botany Society of America as well as at the annual BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium summer workshop, and at both the National Institute for Mathematical Biology Synthesis Center (NIMBioS) at the University of Tennessee and the Mathematical Biology Institute (MBI) at Ohio State University. In addition, we made numerous presentations at community colleges such as Cecil College (MD), Lakeland College (WI), Lane Community College (OR), Massachusetts Bay Community College (MA), Montgomery Community College (MD), Three Rivers Community College (MO), and Tulsa Community College (OK). We presented on the C3 project at other national professional societies such as at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), the Association of College and University Biology Educators (ACUBE), the Ecological Society of America (ESA), Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL), the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST), the Society for Mathematical Biology (SMB), the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), and at a Gordon Research Conference as well as abroad in Singapore, China, Portugal, and the Netherlands. Faculty participants primarily taught general biology for majors and non-majors, microbiology, anatomy and physiology, and basic quantitative methods in biology. The workshops emphasized collaborative curriculum development and project-based online group work. Many of these projects can be viewed from the C3 website (http://c3cyberlearning.ning.com/) and the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium website (http://bioquest.org). Faculty were engaged in cyberlearning experiences and helped prepare them to help their students take advantage of cyberlearning opportunities. This project addressed challenges faced by community college science educators by helping biology faculty enhance science teaching and learning by effectively using publicly accessible digital library materials; networked computing and communications technologies; and E-science resources. Faculty participants established thirty-five working groups that explored such topics as image analysis, animation, creating online materials using YouTube, use of social media for collaborative problem solving, shared writing, quantitative reasoning, data mining of complex data, modeling, bioinformatics, issues oriented pedagogy, use of primary research articles in beginning courses, problem based and case based learning, peer review, exploring global health, exploring evolution of microbes with data, and using tools (GapMinder and ManyEyes) for visualizing data online. Special emphasis was placed on the use of Digital Library resources. We worked collaboratively with our digital library partners including, the National Science Digital Libraray (NSDL), MicrobLibrary, BioSciEdNed (BEN, AAAS), American Physiological Society (APS) Archive, Open Educational Resources (OERCommons), The Applied Math and Science Education Repository (AMSER), and BioQUEST. Our collaborations with the libraries served to raise awareness within the libraries of how their materials were being used by Community College faculty, and to raise awareness within the Community College faculty of the nature of the resources available online.

Agency
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Institute
Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE)
Application #
1348903
Program Officer
Victor Piotrowski
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
2012-08-31
Budget End
2013-10-31
Support Year
Fiscal Year
2013
Total Cost
$25,650
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Delaware
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Newark
State
DE
Country
United States
Zip Code
19716