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Teresa DeGolier, Department of Biological Sciences Inquiry-based education experience and interest: I presently teach the methods course for secondary science education majors. To keep up with all of the changes that are occurring in the Minnesota Profile of Learning, I have participated in several conferences put on by SciMathMN, Project kaleidoscope, and the Collaboration for the Advancement of College Teaching and Learning. All of these organizations are interested in effective teaching through inquiry-based education at a variety of instructional levels from high school through college. I have also been modifying lab activities (from a canned, traditional approach) to promote the student understanding that to truly understand biology, students must examine the process of scientific investigation and not just the information that results from it. The intent has thus been to develop good questions to ask that the student may study first hand by making their own observations, developing their own hypothesis, and testing their hypothesis with experiments. This approach has had variable effectiveness and is improving with the academic and experiential level of the student. The more faculty that become involved in this effort, the more consistency in increasing the problem solving ability of the students. Gregg Johnson, Dept. of Biological Sciences Swee May Tang, Department of Biological Sciences Inquiry-based education experience and interest: I was exposed to inquiry-based education and active learning two years ago. Since the, I have applied some of the concepts and tools I learned from workshops on inquiry-based education and active learning in the classes I teach. The classroom environment whether in a building or in the field is a great place for conducting experiments on education pedagogies. I teach content material through engaging students in activities and small group discussions. I see my role as helping students develop analytical and critical thinking skills. A means for achieving this is presenting students with issue-oriented problems. Most of my exams focus on the understanding and application of concepts and are less content driven. Laboratories are designed as inquiry-based experiences and students are exposed to the scientific process by going through the process of inquiry themselves and gaining experience and insight as to what it means to be a scientist. I also train students in writing scientific papers, giving oral presentation and presenting findings in the form of posters. |
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