ABLE: Designing Online Laboratory Activities
In Spring 2020 biology lab instructors across North America were forced to move their courses online with just a few days warning. Thousands of hours of creative thinking and effort went into this massive undertaking. Starting in May 2020, three members of the Association for Biology Laboratory Education (ABLE) and I launched an online discussion forum with these goals:
- Capture the good ideas and best practices of our colleagues from Spring 2020 and share them with a larger community;
- Start a conversation that helped us prepare more thoughtfully for online labs in fall and later;
- Identify and share resources;
- Launch collaborations to create new materials that are needed but do not exist already;
- Provide professional support to our peer community.
We continue to collect and share ideas, and hope to grow this project into a permanent initiative to support ongoing online lab development.
BioTAP Network: Evidence-Based GTA Training
From historical and local data we know GTAs are unlikely to adopt novel instructional practices that they themselves did not experience as students. This raises interesting questions about the origins of their resistance. Looking through the lens of diffusion of innovation theory (Everett M. Rogers’ work), the question is whether these novice post-secondary teachers are resisting change because they: 1) lack the confidence to implement new methods; 2) lack the firsthand experience needed to visualize how to implement it; 3) have not seen it enacted by someone they trust; or 4) some combination of these factors?
- Which sources of information and support do new GTAs use most often and most intensively as they develop their teaching practice: near peers, formal training, just-in-time training, or online/digital support? Which are treated as most reliable?
- How quickly do GTAs adopt technology resources to support teaching? Can GTAs integrate digital supports appropriately and accurately? If not, what are their primary barriers to doing so?
- How do GTAs’ past experiences and biases affect enculturation to and adoption of evidence-based teaching strategies? Do GTAs’ own past experiences create bias for or against specific teaching methods or practices? For or against nationally recognized principles of practice?
The Bio-TAP Network is located at U. Tenn. Knoxville and led by Dr. Beth Schussler. The Network supports research on training, professional development, and evaluation of graduate teaching assistants’ (GTAs) knowledge and skills, teaching practices, and impact on undergraduates.
Shared interests and goals include:
- Assessing GTA cognition
- Knowledge, skills (pedagogical knowledge, assessment design)
- Attitudes to teaching
- Beliefs about teaching, self-efficacy
- Assessing GTA teaching practice
- Planning (backward design)
- Instruction, enacting ideals (active, inquiry-based teaching)
- Assessment (purposes, scoring rubrics)
- Assessing GTA impact on undergraduates
- Knowledge, skills gains
- Retention
- Attainment
- Interest
- Undergraduate self-efficacy
- Accelerating GTA skills development and adoption of evidence-based instructional practices.
- Promoting and supporting self-reflective teaching at an earlier career stage.
- Helping GTAs learn to identify and adopt existing proven practices that can solve their specific teaching challenges.