See also: How to Participate in the Workshop Biology Project

Teaching a workshop has required us to learn as many new skills, and explore as many new ideas, as our students. Our goals as faculty mirror our goals for our students, and our efforts to improve our teaching draw on the same principles as the learning processes we try to establish in the classroom. If cookbook labs don't work for students, neither will "cookbook curricula" work for teachers. If collaboration and active learning are useful methods for students, they will be useful for us as well. If students need to be able to question, to take risks, and to get frequent feedback on their efforts, then so do we. We, too, need to confront our misconceptions, make decisions about issues, and develop rational means for investigating the effectiveness of our efforts. This often turns out to be as difficult, and as rewarding, as what our students experience in the workshop.

Topics:

Philosophy and Principles of Improving Teaching
Change
Collaboration
Effective Practices for Improving Teaching
Communication & Feedback
Science Education Journal Club
Teaching Portfolios
Philosophy and Principles

Our purpose here is not to present the "correct" way to plan and teach classes, so a list of "rules" would certainly not be appropriate. Most effective people, however, have a set of principles that guides their behavior. The ideas in this handbook is based on several key principles:

  • Just as "cookbook" labs don't work for students, "cookbook" curricula don't work for instructors. Much of what we do in our biology course is aimed at helping students think more critically, to base important opinions and decisions on thoughtful, rational analyses rather than on habit, hearsay, prejudice, or authority. Instructors, too, need to have good reasons for their important instructional decisions. A major goal of this book is to provide you with resources and insights to help you make these decisions.

  • The learning models we apply to students apply equally well to instructors. Models such as active learning, learning cycles, Perry's model of intellectual development, Bloom's taxonomy of educational objective, and the decision-making model we will present later apply to instructors improving their teaching as well as to students learning. For example, we believe that anyone faced with learning a new concept or skill will benefit from working with it in hands-on activities, practicing it, getting feedback, and applying it in different situations. This is true of a student learning about protein synthesis and an instructor learning about classroom assessment.

  • Teaching is both a creative art and a rational science. We advocate rationality in teaching because this is how we know if what we're doing is working. To do this, we need both data and theory. We collect our own data every day, when we talk with students in class, collect their work, and administer tests, but we often don't think of it as such. In the light of theory, we can consider the questions we're asking about our students' understanding, develop methods to gather information we can use to address these questions, and make sense of what we find.

    Change

    With all of the evidence that our current educational methods are not working, "change" has become more of an assumption or expectation than a solution in most educational institutions. While we believe that everyone can improve, and that you probably bought this book with intentions of changing the way you teach, we have a few caveats to add about change:

  • Don't assume you have to change the way you teach-just be sure you know why you do what you do. We say this because so many teachers we have met seem to assume that change, any change, is always necessary. Change for change's sake alone is likely to waste your time and your students'. As we have said before, if you have examined your current methods, determined that a change is in order, and have ways to determine if your change is effective, you are much more likely to be successful. Remember, though, that it's easy to swing too far in the opposite direction and become paralyzed with indecisiveness. Part of what we want to teach students is that most real-life decisions must be made with inadequate or conflicting information. The same is true of our teaching decisions.

    On the other hand...

  • Try first, think later. Sometimes in order to get enough information to make a decision, we just have to jump in and try something.

  • Don't try to make too many new changes at once. This principle has both a scientific and a practical basis. First, introducing too many new variables at once makes it difficult to separate their effects. While a strictly controlled experiment is not the goal (and is impossible, anyway), it's easier to understand a system with a few modified variables than many. Secondly, making gradual, incremental changes is easier and less frightening than a sudden and complete overhaul of a course. You'll be more likely to keep doing those things that work, and less likely to be overwhelmed and throw the whole thing out, successes as well as failures.

    On the other hand...

  • Small, incremental changes may fail when they come into conflict with other aspects of the learning environment. Sometimes our students' expectations, the bureaucratic functioning of our institutions, or even the classroom atmosphere we ourselves have created, create barriers to our efforts to change. Sometimes we can't do anything about these barriers, but just recognizing them can help. Sometimes we can do something to eliminate or alleviate them; sometimes just being patient, and starting over with the next class, is necessary. While recognizing that there may actually be something wrong with what you're trying to do, don't immediately assume that it's a failure because it failed once. Give it another shot, and consider the possible barriers and how to get around them.

    Collaboration

    College teaching can be a lonely task. When we give seminars or workshops on our teaching methods, the participants tell us that the most useful thing about them is not just the information, but the recognition that there are other people out there dealing with the same problems they are. You are not alone, which leads us to the next principle:

  • You can't do it alone. Well, maybe you can, but it's much more productive, rewarding, and fun working with others. Again, this is true of students and instructors alike. We are much less likely to give up, revert to our old habits, or lose faith in our efforts to become what we want to be, when we have others to help us, and others who depend on us.

    It would be great if we could have called this handbook, "Seven Effortless Ways to Make Your Biology Courses Perfect." Unfortunately, one final principle is more of a recognition of reality than a high ideal: this is not going to be easy, for you or your students. You will have failures, and usually at the most difficult time: the beginning of your efforts. What other reason could there be for the failure of most reform efforts at all levels of our educational system, but that they are difficult and risky. Easier, safer methods are always available: easier because they don't require as much time or effort, and safer because they are less likely to reveal mistakes, problems, and failures. In a later chapter, we discuss ways, not to avoid these inevitable burdens, but to deal with them effectively.

    Effective Practices for Improving Teaching

    Below we describe some of the methods we have found useful in continuously improving our practice and creating a "teaching culture," in which teaching is as important a subject of discussion among faculty as their disciplinary research.

    Communication & Feedback

    Frequent, face-to-face meetings with the entire project staff, not just those currently teaching, proved to be a major factor in achieving some early successes, and helped to maintain our momentum through difficult times. Throughout the first two years of the project, all faculty members and teaching assistants involved in the course met each week to discuss a variety of issues, from reviewing the overall goals of the project to specific problems that were occuring in the course. Regardless of the topic, these meetings provided an opportunity for everyone involved in the project to maintain contact with the rest of the group, promoting group cohesion and a sense of group identity. They also kept us informed about events and issues in the course, and allowed us to share ideas and research in the manner of a journal club. During the third year, we instituted a more formal journal club to focus on major issues in science and general education (described below), while the faculty involved in teaching the course continued to have weekly or bi-weekly prep sessions with the teaching assistants and other project staff. We have also been able to accomplish more and more via electronic communication such as email and bulletin boards, which has the added advantage of providing a permanent record of the groups' communications.

    Science Education Journal Club

    Our science departments organize a variety of "journal clubs," in which faculty and students can meet to share and discuss current research relevant to the club's topic area. Our group has become quite familiar with current research in our areas of interest, including not only science education specifically, but also areas such as the collaborative learning, writing-across-the-curriculum, and the goals of general education courses. These meetings are attended by all of the project staff and other faculty and graduate students from biology, chemistry, English, philosophy, and the Teaching Effectiveness Program.

    Teaching Portfolios

    The concept of teaching portfolios is commanding attention all across academia, as administrators, governing bodies, and teachers themselves demand more effective, more realistic, measures of teaching effectiveness. We, however, are less interested in using portfolios for personnel decisions than we are in using them to thoroughly document and evaluate our teaching and development efforts. Our portfolios include annotated syllabi and handouts, student feedback and comments, classroom research, and reflective statements showing the instructor's philosophy and interpretation of all these materials. Most of this work is available on our computer network, and can be used by future instructors.