Evolution of the clicker question

This question is anatomy subject matter related.

#1.)  Knowing what you do about sexual reproduction in humans, can you sensibly reason that mitochondrial DNA from the offspring is maternal only?

A.  No.  Since each of the gametes is haploid, exactly half of the contribution comes from the male and half comes from the female so it does not make sense for an organism’s mitochondrial DNA to be maternal only.

B.  No.  It is a well known fact that sperm contain many mitochondria to help in the journey to reach the egg.  It would be more sensible to assume that the mitochondrial DNA from the offspring is paternal only.

C.  Yes.  The egg is produced fully prepared and capable of providing everything needed for the developing zygote, including all organelles and a food store, and only requires a male contribution of DNA.

D.  Yes.  Since the egg is so much larger in physical size relative to the sperm and fewer are produced every month relative to sperm, it would make sense that the egg contained the organelles for the developing zygote and eventual fetus.   

E.  I don’t know

Evolution:

With this question, I was hoping to elicit some common misconceptions.  From what I know about teaching this material, students do not know a lot about sexual reproduction, and the little they do know is very superficial.  Asking them a “why” question laced with plausible distractors is more difficult and would hopefully result in great discussion.

This question was pretty much the same from the beginning until now.  The only thing I changed was the amount of answer on choice D.  Originally, choice D only had the word "yes" as an answer.  I added in information to help make the question more difficult to solve, as now choice D is a more plausible alternative.  However, choice C is the most correct.    

Technology Presentation Reflection

I enjoyed Dr. Boyer's presentation on technology in the classroom.  My only complaint is that I wished it would have lasted longer and that we could have learned more about new and exciting gadgets and technological wizardry that are going to be helpful in making our teaching careers more fruitful in the future.  One of the great things I took away from the talk was the formula for deciding whether to implement new technology or not.  It is nice to know that by asking oneself 2 questions, the answers will make the decision.  Also included in the talk was a 4-square diagram to assess the strengths and weaknesses of new technology, in addition to weighing the opportunities and threats.
 I found it particularly interesting that Dr. Boyer was adamant that we all should be using clicker technology.  Some faculty have not yet implemented this technology within their classrooms for one reason or another, so it was interesting to see such a full-fledged one sided view.
I also found interesting the idea of storing bookmarks online instead of a browser or single computer.  I had never thought of it before, but Dr. Boyer made a great point in that, "someday, your trusty computer is going to fail you."  Immediately of concern to me would be work, pictures, and personal documents gone forever, but loosing bookmarks would not have been on the top of my list of things to worry about, until the dust had settled from everything else.  Delicious sounds like a great place to store and share with an online academic society.  He is also so right about how fun it is to say.
In conclusion, I really enjoyed Dr. Boyer's presentation about technology and am excited to implement some of the ideas he had about curation and creation into my own classroom this summer.  I would like to thank Dr. Boyer for putting  on such an engaging and informative presentation.

Technology Questions

Questions for Dr. Boyer regarding technology in the classroom:

1.)  How would you try to convince older, more "seasoned" faculty that might be resistant to implementing new technology into their classrooms or changing up their teaching routines?

2.)  In your opinion, what is one beneficial piece of new technology that we "new hipsters" can implement into our classrooms on the very first day?

3.)  What are your favorite empirical peer-reviewed journal articles that you could recommend to new teachers who are wanting more information about the benefits of technology implementations in the classroom?

4.)  With the advent of new technology into the classrooms, there is always a worry about students utilizing this technology "for evil" rather than "for good", or to cheat, rather than only learn.  Do you have any advice to combat cheating or plagiarizing in this new age of technology?

5.)  Do you feel the practical teaching applications of expensive new technology, for example, a 3D projector system outweigh the costs?

Active Learning in Environmental Science

Applying active learning strategies within the classroom has been shown to benefit students in many ways.  There are a lot of things future educators like about active learning, but my favorite thing is that students who don't usually get the opportunity to, or who don't usually speak up in class now have a setting in order to do so.  As an instructor, I always wonder about the quiet ones.  One of the main learning objectives I would like to target in my Environmental Science class is knowledge about how personal and societal actions affect our environment.  The outcomes I would like students to formulate are a basic understanding of and proposed actions for environmental issues facing our society.  As a result, I like the idea of implementing a group electronic portfolio as an active learning strategy for my class.

I would divide the class randomly into small groups consisting of 4-6 members depending upon class size.   I would then have each group brainstorm an area of Environmental Science that they feel is interesting and publicly controversial to learn more information about.  Upon approving each area and idea, I would then go through and assign the project for each group.  Specific detailed instructions on how healthy group interaction should occur, guidelines for content, and a rubric will be given to students the first day. In addition, the students will be informed how their participation will be graded.  Group feedback and collaboration is encouraged and each group member will be individually assessed by the other 5 group members, as a portion of his/her individual grade.  In addition, each group member will get the opportunity to grade each portion of the final portfolio, and the average overall grade for each section will be included into the final grade for the project, assessed by the instructor.  Each group member would be responsible as "project manager" for a particular portion of the project.  For example, a group decides they are interested in further exploring global warming.  This project can be broken up into sections such as: Greenhouse Effect, Carbon Cycle Interruption, Other Causes of Climate Change, Impacts of Change, and Future Courses of Action to Remedy.  Each of the six members would be "project manager" on one of the six sections of the portfolio.  During class time, and out of class, each component of the portfolio would be completed with all 6 group members.  The project manager's job is to micromanage their section, and make sure everyone is doing an equal weight of work.  Ultimately, the project manager is responsible for all the major decisions, as his or her vision for the section of the portfolio.  The completed group electronic portfolios will be presented to the rest of the class, with each section presented individually by the "project manager" who resided over it.  This means that all students need to remain accountable until the end of the project.  It is also an incentive for each project manager to make their section, and work hard on all other sections to make the project the best that it can be, as it will be shown to the entire class.

I feel that this is a particularly good assignment to evoke collaborative group work because not only will the "project managers" who are helping to clarify the information to others, but all group members will have an increased understanding of the material themselves.  Student usage of correct terminology could also increase as they are planning a professional presentation.  Having the groups small, creates a more comfortable environment for students to receive help from peers or give instruction.  There are enough students in each group so that misconceptions can be addressed and gaps of knowledge filled in, but without alienating group members in front of a large amount of people.  Again, the main reason I chose this assignment was to evoke more participation from quieter students and allow them to create personal connections among group members.  As discussed by Armstrong, Chang, and Brickman, there are many social benefits of being in a group, including more positive psychological energy, feedback, self-interest being modified into joint-interest, benefits to social and communication skills, friendships forming, and successful collaborative learning transferred into other portions of student life.  Promotive interaction skills including: mutual help and assistance, exchange of needed resources, mutual influence, trust, and constructive management of conflict are more of the many benefits to active learning (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 2007).  The portfolio project also leaves plenty of room for formative assessment to occur, while students work collaboratively within their groups.

Student's Role of Assessment

• Student's Role of Assessment:

  
  

    I would like you to briefly (paragraph or two) reflect on assessment from the perspective of the student.  What is the role of assessment for the student?  How should they use it or what do they stand to gain?  Please sumbit post your reflections by Thursday morning at 6 a.m. 

  Personally, I think the role of students in assessment is to be completely honest, both with themselves and the instructor.  This honesty is evident when the instructor asks if one understands something.  Sometimes just a simple "yes" or "no" response  is all it takes for formative assessment to be complete.  If the student is not completely honest, he or she may be missing out on an opportunity to gain feedback about what they think they know or clarification, prompting of metacognition, or even removal of misconceptions.  Another role of students in assessment is to take the feedback and do something with it- throw away the misconception, change study habits, realize they don't know as much as they think they did, or choose another mechanism to problem solve.

  
  

  Tanner and Allen put the importance of the student's role in assessment into perspective for me when they said that it bridges the divide between what is being taught and what is being learned.  It is the student's opportunity to gain insight into what they think they've learned by listening to formative assessment and challenging their ideas, constructs, or conceptions if they were wrong or had a superficial understanding.  Finally, toward the end of the unit or chapter, the students receive concrete evidence on what they actually do know via measures of summative assessment.  If both students and teachers work together on assessment, students at this point should fully know if they know something.

Deepened understanding of Formative Assessment

Formative Assessment Revisited

Today's exercise asked you to apply the Backward Design framework to create a unit on formative assessment.  How, if at all, did this activity change and/or deepen your understanding of formative assessment?  How would you describe to one of your science colleagues what the most salient features of formative assessment are? 

My group members, Alberto, Carrie, and I had a very easy time with this assignment.  While it is supposed to take approximately 3 hours, with three of us, 50 minutes was almost enough time to pour our ideas into one solid "backwards design" template.  We utilized the information that we read in the Wiggins and McTighe chapter about backwards design to create a thoughtful unit on assessment.  We first started filling out the learning goals.  We asked ourselves, "What do we want our students to know or be aware of as a result of our teaching this unit?"  After we had formalized four learning goals, we decided next to ask ourselves, "What evidence are we going to need in order to fully know that our students have grasped hold of the different types of assessment?"  We decided that we needed to figure out student outcomes, if we were going to have any evidence of their learning, and start thinking about the different ways we could assess this understanding of assessment.  Next, we asked ourselves, "How are we going to teach them?"  "What learning experiences are we going to incorporate within our curriculum in order to provide the students with an opportunity to get used to this material?"   We figured out 2 or 3 days worth of activities, discussions, and pre/post questions in order to identify misconceptions.  Lastly, we asked ourselves, "Based on what we have provided for them, will they acquire the desired learning outcomes?  How can we test this?"  We began talking about assessments, and ended up creating groups to do a short presentation on assessment, while receiving verbal feedback, written feedback, and a rubric describing how the presentation should be laid out from the instructor.  We also talked about the importance of elucidating anything erroneous that we, as the teachers, heard during the presentations.  Odds are, if one student was confused on a subject, other students would be as well.  Addressing the entire class immediately can prevent the spread of the false information, which is yet another example of formative assessment.  After this assignment, I do feel that I have a deeper understanding of assessment, but more so backwards design, and the process that goes into creating a lesson plan.  All of the assessment information was in the reading and we just had to pull it out where necessary.  Actually creating the lesson plan involved more thought.

For the second part of the question, I think I would start by educating my colleague about what the differences between formative and summative assessment tend to be.  I would begin by elucidating to my colleague that summative assessment is more thorough, detailed, analyzed, and extensively reproduced, much like the scientific research we produce within the department.  Summative assessment is in a somewhat standardized format and can make comparisons between schools and individual students.  However, formative assessment is much different.  It is exploratory, preliminary, and instructive for future experiments.  It is a key tool to connect learning and teaching and it can happen at any time within a classroom.  I would explain that formative assessment is responsive and ongoing.  I would emphasize that it is informal and interactive with the students.  It is a bit carefree in that it can be unplanned, and one on one or with the entire class.  Formative assessment can be "implied' and can be done by both students and teachers.  I would encourage this colleague to give it a try and see how his or her class responds.  

Reworking the Student Interview

Write a reflection on your practice interview and post it to your blog.  What did you learn?  What was difficult?  What went well?  How will this impact your interview protocol?  Did you learn any "tricks" that others might find useful in uncovering student understanding?


I found that a few things worked and a few things did not work with my student interview. I found that asking the student to draw a diagram of the heart was a good idea, because the student then has the ability to refer to the diagram in order to better articulate their answers.  I found that some of my questions were too simplistic, and some were more difficult than I had originally anticipated. It was brought to my attention that on two of the questions, I was essentially probing the same fundamental understanding twice.  My practice participant was extremely good at articulating his answers, and I realized that my interviewee could possibly be less so.  I have adjusted some of my questions to reflect this realization.  I want my interviewee to draw more while they explain their answers, so I have adjusted this in my line of questioning and have even implemented some usage of colored pencils to depict oxygen rich and oxygen poor blood.  I have also asked questions that involve the idea of transfer across disciplines, because most of the students who are in my class are going into the medical profession someday and will need to use the information they learn in this class to make informed decisions and diagnoses in their future professions.  By implementing questions about blood vessels and the pulse rate, this line of questioning is not just about the heart structure and function, and is making the student's lean on their new knowledge and implement it into real life situations.  Also, by asking the question about fetuses circulating blood, the student has to connect dots that have not been explicitly spelled out to them in class, and may result in elucidating some inconsistencies in their reasoning.  My in-class "mock interview" participant was a big help, and I couldn't have improved my question list without him.