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Kyriaki Chatzikyriakidou Teaching and Learning Portfolio
This portfolio submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Delta Certificate in Research, Teaching, and Learning.
Delta Program in Research, Teaching, and Learning University of Wisconsin-Madison
August 31, 2015
The Delta Program in Research, Teaching, and Learning is affiliated with the Center of the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning Network (CIRTL— Grant No. DUE-1231286). CIRTL is a National Science Foundation sponsored initiative committed to developing and supporting a learning community of STEM faculty, staff, post-docs, and graduate students who are dedicated to implementing and advancing effective teaching practices for diverse student audiences. The Delta Program is supported by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Provost’s Office and Graduate School. Additional support is provided by the Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation. For more information, please call us at 608-261-1180 or visit http://www.delta.wisc.edu.
Delta Pillars
The Delta Program is founded on three interrelated core ideas: the Teaching-as-Research
approach is explored via Learning Community opportunities that are based on Learning-through-
Diversity. These ideas (pillars) are the foundation of the Center for the Integration of Research,
Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL), and national project and network of which Delta is a founding
member.
Teaching-as-Research
By applying research methods—idea, experiment, observation, analysis, improvement—to the
challenge of teaching, the Delta Program:
Brings the skills of research faculty to the ongoing investigation of student learning
Promotes innovation in teaching and measurement of student learning
Advances the role of instructors in the ongoing improvement of teaching practices
Learning Communities
Through collaborative activities and programs, the Delta Program creates a community of
graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty that will:
Support and validate growth in teaching and learning
Create a foundation for institutional change
Learning-through-Diversity
Recognizing the common challenges in teaching and learning and the strength in bringing
together diverse views, the Delta Program is:
Interdisciplinary—serving all science, engineering, and mathematics departments
Cross-generational—bringing together graduate students, postdocs, and both new and
experienced faculty
Comprehensive—providing knowledge, practice, and community
Responsive—reflecting the broad range of responsibilities that face today's faculty
Inclusive—welcoming for a multifaceted and diverse group of people
Table of Contents
Teaching Philosophy ....................................................................................................................... 1
Mentoring Philosophy .................................................................................................................. 2
1st Teaching Artifact ....................................................................................................................... 3
Reflection .................................................................................................................................... 9
2nd Teaching Artifact ................................................................................................................... 10
Reflection ................................................................................................................................. 17
Teaching as research (TAS) internship project ...................................................................... 18
Reflection ................................................................................................................................. 31
APPENDIX I ................................................................................................................................. 32
APPENDIX II ................................................................................................................................ 35
CIRTL LO matrix tables ................................................................................................................ 37
Teaching Philosophy
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Teaching Philosophy Kyriaki Chatzikyriakidou
Teaching embodies excellence in communication
One way to spread ideas is the process of teaching, either students in a University or the public
in our society. Teaching embodies excellence in communication. It enfolds discussion by the use
of linguistic and practical skills and the result of it: understanding. Understanding brings easiness
in our lives and magnifies the interest that might exist for specific concepts. With the passing of
time, this interest is transformed into mature knowledge and communication is advanced into
teaching.
Student-centered teaching approaches
Today, there is evidence that active learning and student-centered teaching approaches should
be used in the classroom. For instance, in Microbiology, the most challenging part is the “unseen
world” of microorganisms that students need to see in order to completely perceive and the use
of microscopes, is a great way to succeed this. It has always been of my interest to be able to
imagine what the words on a book’s page try to help us comprehend. From a holistic point of
view, the combination of lecture and student interaction or theory and practice, usually at a
cellular level will excite students and offer them the opportunity to actively participate in class
activities, while exploring their own potential as future scientists.
Knowledge is to be shared
The cognitive path of knowledge building in an individual can be seen as a system of smaller
developmental paths that sometimes, somewhere will merge and start over creating new paths.
This happens for both the students and the teachers. However, it is the teacher’s responsibility
to assess students’ progress of learning and also constantly examine whether the learning
outcomes successfully meet with the learning goals and there is alignment of the teaching plan.
Majoring in Biological Sciences throughout my undergraduate as well as graduate studies, I have
realized the importance of teaching in this particular scientific field. My inclination towards
microbiology and specifically food-borne pathogenic microorganisms has always supported and
will keep supporting my desire to spread this type of knowledge. Every student is a unique and
complex learner, so I would like to introduce students into Biology/Microbiology courses by
using both individual and group projects, so I can cover as many of their learning needs as
possible. My teaching assistant experience in UW–Madison covers a broad spectrum of classes-
from large lab sections to small discussion-based courses, which I mostly had the chance to lead
solo, as the only instructor present in classroom. Furthermore, my experience as a teaching
fellow of the UW-HHMI program, introduced me into scientific teaching methods as well as
educational research background information and questions that need to be investigated and
which I am currently taking this information a step further in my career, with a M.Sc. degree in
Curriculum and Instruction.
Mentoring Philosophy
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Mentoring Philosophy Kyriaki Chatzikyriakidou
Unique mentoring relationships
The relationship between a mentor and a mentee can be seen as similar to the one
between a parent and a child. Mentor is a persona that offers advice, encourage the mentee to
pursue his/her dreams and most importantly to construct a career pathway that the mentee
would like to follow. In order for the mentor to be able to offer the above-mentioned support,
he/she needs to have acquired some previous skills as well as experience. Although the mentor
has to be an expert in these characteristics, at the same time he/she will continue learning new
mentoring approaches along with the mentee throughout each and every mentoring
relationship. In my opinion, mentoring also needs patience exercised from both sides, the
mentor and the mentee, and at the same time persistence in finding what the mentee’s subject
of true interest is, while keeping in mind that the mentor will guide this individual’s personal
quest.
As a graduate student who mentored younger undergraduates in UW-Madison, it was
enlightening for me to recognize and comprehend these aspects of mentoring. Coming from a
different cultural and background training, than my mentees in UW-Madison, was my initial
incentive to try to build successful mentoring relationships. Addressing diversity in
communication patterns or learning styles, is something that cannot be successfully met without
realizing that we all carry a unique background which shapes our learning, thinking as well as
communicating processes. In my opinion, these differences should be taken as opportunities for
further personal development and academic growth of the mentee, rather than as a hindrance. I
believe, this is the first step that needs to be established between a mentor and a mentee, prior
to any type of scientific training, either theoretical or practical.
You learn something the best, when you teach it
As a post-doc fellow, I had the opportunity to facilitate discussions around these aspects
of mentoring with a group of undergraduates, majoring in biological disciplines, where they
were taught how to be peer-mentors in a biology course, while co-facilitating with the main
instructor. As the saying goes -You learn something the best, when you teach it-, it very well
applies to me during my interaction with the students in this course, called “Entering
Mentoring”, when my ideas regarding mentoring were further advanced and my interest in
supervising and mentoring students was solidified.
I would like to draw on my previous experiences and continue learning the art of
successful mentoring, not only as an instructor, but also as a person in any biology-related
environment that I may have the chance to participate in.
Everyone needs to be taught or at least be aspired by someone who is in the same
career pathway that they wish to follow. We all need a mentor in our lives, not only for our
careers but also for development of our own ideas, opinions and beliefs.
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1ST TEACHING ARTIFACT
This artifact was developed as part of my scientific teaching training, through the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Teaching Fellows program at University of
Wisconsin–Madison in 2011-2012.
The training program incorporated two main elements:
a) Development of a teaching unit during Fall semester – in my case for the course
“Critical Analyses in Microbiology” (Micro 305). In brief, in this course students
read a research paper every week and discuss its hypothesis and results. The
course aims to develop students’ critical thinking in microbiology research. This
unit’s research paper was “Bacterial charity work leads to population-wide
resistance. Lee H., Molla M., Cantor C. and Collins J. 2010. Nature vol. 467 pp. 82-
85.”
b) Incorporation of this teaching unit in course’s syllabus and facilitation of teaching
the complete syllabus during Spring semester.
The artifact, presented here, is related to (part a) the development of the teaching unit.
The main elements of scientific teaching were incorporated into this teaching unit and
the process is shown in steps.
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Antibiotic resistance in bacterial populations
as a result of their social behavior
(Syllabus title: “Bacterial antibiotic resistance and their social behavior”)
Outline
- A 10-minute presentation on antibiotic resistance and introduction to the assigned paper
- 30 minutes of interactive activities – group work and answering homework questions
- Spend the last 10 minutes or less discussing about diseases caused by antibiotic resistant
cells and ways to cure them
Introduction
This teachable unit will educate students about antibiotic resistance in bacterial
populations for a total teaching time of 50 minutes. The level of this class is
undergraduate/graduate, taking into consideration that the majority of the students are
expected to be undergraduate students, majoring in Microbiology or related Sciences.
The design of this teachable unit uses the backward design, where learning goals and
outcomes are first selected and then student assessment is aligned to these learning goals
through the design of the activities.
Learning goals and outcomes
The learning goals described below were formed based on two fundamental questions:
1) how do the learning goals represent the nature of Science and concepts related to
antibiotic resistance?
2) what will students know, understand, and be able to do at the end of the unit?
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Table 5.1 / Do the learning goals represent the nature of Science and concepts related to
antibiotic resistance?
Learning goals related to aspects of Science
Learning Goals
Knowledge
Students will read a primary literature paper and
understand the main conclusions.
Students will know the relationship between
bacterial social behavior and bacterial antibiotic
resistance in the context of the assigned reading.
Skills
Students will understand how to identify hypotheses,
experiments and conclusions from the paper.
Students will learn to design specific experiments in
order to test or answer specific scientific questions.
Behavior(s)
Students will think of bacterial antibiotic resistance,
as a result of bacterial social behavior and
communicate their ideas and opinions.
Attitudes
Students will appreciate the relevance of scientific
discovery in today’s society throughout history.
Students will be motivated to conduct research on
antibiotic resistance and contribute to the scientific
efforts that deal with this issue in bacterial
population studies.
Table 5.2 / What will students know, and be able to do at the end of the unit?
Learning goals for scientific process (experimentation)
Characteristics of learning goals
Primary conceptual goal Students will be able to understand the experimental designs and analyze the data that answered the hypotheses of the assigned reading.
Secondary conceptual goal Students will understand the correlation between bacterial social behavior and antibiotic resistance.
Specific topics Students will learn that indole is the main compound during the cell to cell communication in Escherichia coli populations in the presence of antibiotics.
The learning goals of this teachable unit will be completed during a 50-minute class and
at the same time the learning outcomes will be observed and recorded through participation in
the activities. The work flow of this class is shown below:
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30 minutes in class activity (and homework)
10 minute presentation 10 minutes discussion
Table 5.3 / Specific characteristics of work flow steps.
Duration Identity Description
10 minutes Presentation
Introducing students to the topic of the day and showing the main ideas of the assigned reading.
10 minutes In-class activity (and homework)
Group work on assigned questions.
20 - 25 minutes Discussion with instructor.
5 -10 minutes
Discussion
Possible ways to cure diseases caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Each activity is built on all the previous ones. In order for students to fully comprehend
antibiotic resistance in bacterial populations, activities and assessments have been designed
throughout all Bloom’s taxonomy levels. Table 5.4 describes each of these levels.
Assessment and evaluation
The assessment and evaluation are responsible for providing both student and
instructor the information, whether or not students learned to think critically and gauge their
own learning. The assessment part was developed based on table 5.4, which provides a
comparison between learning goals and outcomes of this teachable unit.
At the end of every class, the assignments will be collected by the instructor, corrected,
and returned back to students during the next class. In this way an individual feedback will be
provided and each student will be able to monitor his/her own progress. The instructor will
collect data about student’s progress in order to verify that the primary learning goal, meaning
the ability of students to read and analyze research papers, is met. (This instructor took this
Phase 2 P3 P1
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decision for education research reasons and it is not necessary to be done by the rest of the
instructors of this course).
Table 5.4 / Learning goals, outcomes and assessment of learning.
Level of Bloom’s
Taxonomy Learning goal Learning outcome Assessment
Knowledge
Students will know that bacterial antibiotic resistance can be improved by population dynamics.
Students will be able to state that highly resistant cells can protect low resistant cells of the same population under antibiotic stress.
Homework/In class activity
prepare individually and brainstorm in
class
Comprehension
Students will understand the relationship between highly resistant and less resistant mutants.
Students will be able to state that the production of indole by highly resistant cells enhances survival of low resistant cells under antibiotic stress.
Homework prepare individually and brainstorm in
class
Application
Students will understand the existence of molecular mechanisms that induce antibiotic resistance.
Students will be able to state that indole induces physiological mechanisms, such as export of antibiotic and oxidative-stress mechanism.
Homework prepare individually and brainstorm in
class
Analysis Students will be able to analyze data.
Students will be able to analyze the data in figures 1 and 2 of the homework.
Homework group work and brainstorm and
brainstorm in class
Synthesis Students will be able to think about the design of an experiment.
Students will be able to design a similar to the assigned reading experiment.
In class activity group work in class
Evaluation
Students will understand the importance of bacterial social behavior to the cure of diseases that are caused by antibiotic resistant bacterial cells.
Students will be able to design an experiment based on the idea that deficient to specific genes cells can be used against resistant to antibiotics bacteria, in order to cure such diseases.
In class activity group work and 1-
minute presentation
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Activities
The activities can be categorized into two groups: homework questions and mini-
lectures given by the instructor. The questions will include low order and high order critical
thinking skills, which will be first, completed by students as homework and then discussed in
class. Discussion will be composed of small group brainstorming as well as whole class
discussion. Question 4 will also include a 1-minute presentation of groups of students and a
mini-talk by the instructor.
Further information is provided in APPENDIX I.
Scientific teaching
Alignment
Alignment between learning goals and outcomes is mediated by the feedback provided to
students, as part of the assessment section of this teaching unit.
Active learning
During the duration of the semester, students will have the chance to talk with each
other or even speak in front of class and share their opinion. Every behavior is welcomed, as
long as is not offensive or unfair to the rest of the class.
Bacterial social behavior is an impactful scientific topic, as it affects our own health. It
can provide students the opportunity to think about future research on this research field.
During the group work, students will have the opportunity to collaborate with others and form
their ideas. The instructor is advised to elaborate on information that could arouse students’
curiosity.
Diversity and collaboration
UW-Madison classes are usually made of an heterogeneous mix of cultures and nationalities.
One way to ensure equality in a class like this one, is to shuffle students every week, so no
particular sitting patterns get strictly established. In this way, every student will have the chance
to talk to the majority, if not all, of the students. (other ideas from future instructors are
welcomed, as long as they serve the purpose of engaging students with fair and transparent
intentions). Classes are made not only to educate people, but also to cultivate our behavior
towards others. Diversity comes as a gift for international colleges, like UW – Madison, and for
this reason, instructors should take advantage of this and use it to broaden their student’s
cultural and subsequently learning horizons.
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Reflection “Critical Analyses in Microbiology” (Micro 305) is a discussion-based course aiming to help
students develop their critical thinking skills by reading various research papers. Each week
students complete homework questions and participate in various in-class activities, along with
discussing the homework questions.
As a participant in the HHMI Teaching Fellows program in UW-Madison, I had to design a
teaching unit for Micro 305, following the scientific teaching framework (Scientific Teaching, Jo
Handelsman et al.). The main axis of this framework is the alignment of learning goals with
learning outcomes and assessing whether this alignment was successful. The development of
this teaching unit, took place during Fall semester of year 2011, while being instructed about
scientific teaching and presenting our work for in-class peer-review. In addition, all teaching
fellows of Micro 305 were coordinated by Professor Yu, who was the main instructor of this
course.
The learning outcomes were designed based on the six levels of Bloom’s taxonomy on cognitive
skills and I purposefully chose the low-order levels for designing homework questions, assuming
that students will be able to answer them on their own. On the other hand, analysis and
evaluation levels (high-order cognition) were used for designing the in-class activities, which are
harder for students to think on their own, but with interaction and discussion with peers, they
can have better chances on answering them. Furthermore, the class size of my section was
relatively small (<10 students) and this gave me plenty of time to interact with every student.
Although, the design of a complete teaching unit was challenging at first, this was a great first
teaching experience for me and an opportunity to acquire an immense amount of knowledge
regarding scientific teaching. The goals-outcomes alignment is vital part of teaching, as it
provides the instructor with a clear teaching plan, adaptable to modifications that may be
needed due to class pace. Critical thinking is a very important skill in any scientific field, thus
students need to acquire it as early as possible in their undergraduate studies training. Critical
Analyses in Microbiology is a course made to serve this purpose and I am glad I had the chance
to be the instructor for an academic semester.
Designing and teaching this unit and course overall, created the interest in conducting a small
education research study, presented next, as the second teaching artifact of this portfolio.
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2ND TEACHING ARTIFACT
This artifact is a small-scale, self-designed education research project.
The research was conducted during the teaching class of “Critical Analyses in
Microbiology” and it was an optional part of my scientific teaching project during the
HHMI Teaching Fellows program at University of Wisconsin – Madison.
The results of this study were presented (poster presentation) during the Teaching &
Learning Symposium at UW-Madison.
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Applying Bloom’s taxonomy theory to advance critical thinking of
undergraduate biology students
K. Chatzikyriakidou
Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching, Institute for Biology Education, 2012.
Abstract It is known that introductory Microbiology classes enhance the development of low-order
cognitive skills, however, development of high order cognitive skills is considered challenging
due to limited time and wide variety of material to be covered. “Critical analyses in
Microbiology” is a discussion-based course, offering students the opportunity to critically
analyze microbiology research data. The aim of this study was to investigate whether student’s
ability to critically think of experimental data could improve when students individually
categorize homework questions into the six Bloom’s cognitive levels. As far as the applicability
of these activities, they were both successfully completed without consuming a lot of class time
and without interrupting the general teaching plan. Although no pertinent trend was found in
the data collected, results showed that students were better able to recognize low-order
cognitive levels questions than high-order levels ones, which seemed to align with the results of
the short-time assessment activity as well. Further research is needed to conclude these results
in similar introductory Microbiology courses with higher numbers of participants and repeats of
this methodology.
Introduction In 1950’s the American educator Benjamin Bloom developed a classification of human
cognitive levels, known as Bloom’s taxonomy of the cognitive domain (2). The levels increase in
complexity and critical thinking is accomplished when a student is able to think at cognitive
levels 3 to 6 (application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation). Through application of previous
knowledge to new context, analysis and synthesis of ideas when problem-solving and evaluation
of the newly formed knowledge, students are able to think critically of scientific information, not
only in biology major, but in any scientific discipline. Today Bloom’s taxonomy is used by biology
instructors during syllabus writing and course learning goals development (1,3,4). Although
students have access to a course’s syllabus and learning goals, it can not be taken for granted
that students recognize which cognitive level they have mastered at the beginning of a course
and what is the ultimate goal after completing a course. In literature, there is no information on
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the application of Bloom’s taxonomy in a student-centered instructional approach, where
students could potentially rank themselves on Bloom’s taxonomy and self-evaluate their
learning experience.
Majority of undergraduate biology courses are taught in traditional ways with lectures
and exam questions mainly focusing on remembering and understanding of scientific facts, thus
low-order cognitive skills. In University of Wisconsin – Madison, the course “Critical analyses in
Microbiology” has been developed to address this issue, as it has the aim to advance student
cognition to these high-order cognitive skills through discussions on research papers with their
peers. Since the learning environment was set for advancement of student cognitive skills, this
research study was designed to examine whether student’s ability to critically think of
experimental data could improve when students individually categorize homework questions
into the six Bloom’s cognitive levels.
Methodology
Course description
“Critical Analyses in Microbiology” is a discussion-based course aiming to develop
critical thinking skills of undergraduate biology students. It consists of 15 teachable units, each
one taught each week, following an increasing level of difficulty in analyzing research data. The
teaching units were built by participants of Teaching Fellows program following the scientific
teaching framework (5,6). Students read different research papers and answer various
questions, regarding the hypotheses and findings of the research study, either as homework or
as in-class activities.
Bloom’s taxonomy activity
The researcher provided students with two identical Bloom’s taxonomy forms to fill,
along with a brief description of the Bloom’s taxonomy and a handout, constructed by the
researcher. Each form had a table made of five columns in total, each one representing the
course week and specific homework questions of each week’s material. Each line of the table
represented one of the six Bloom’s taxonomy levels. For practical reasons, one form included all
the even course week numbers and the other included all the odd course week numbers, so that
the researcher could keep one of the forms, while students could keep the other one. The
homework questions were chosen based on the Bloom’s taxonomy level that the researcher
thought they belong to. Each week, students were asked to choose for each question listed on
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the table, what Bloom’s taxonomy level they thought the question belonged to, allowing them
to choose more than one levels per question if they thought so. This process was repeated for
nine weeks and students had a week to complete and return the form.
Short-time in-class written assessment
The activity consisted of two unannounced mini-tests at two time intervals; one during
the first quarter and one during the third quarter of the course. Each test was an excerpt of a
scientific paper, including an experimental aim, a brief experimental design and the key findings
of the experiment. The excerpt was chosen from a scientific paper that students had to read as
part of their homework. This assessment happened in two different orders: one excerpt was
introduced to the class as homework and then as a short-time written test (during third
quarter), while the other excerpt was first seen in-class as part of the short-time written test
and then as a homework (during first quarter). The students were asked to read this excerpt and
then briefly (1-2 sentences) answer two questions. The first question “What did the authors
want to study?” (why? question) addressed the aim/hypothesis of the experiment, while the
second question “What did the authors find at the end?“ (what? question) addressed the
findings. The time for the in-class activity was limited to 5 minutes. Both homework and in-class
responses were graded on a pass/fail basis.
Results and Discussion The main goal of this study was to test whether students get better at understanding
what the hypothesis of an experiment is as well as analyzing research data. As the instructor and
researcher of this class and study, I wanted to let students know what “high-order cognitive
skills” means, while trying to advance their critical thinking in microbiology research. Designing a
Bloom’s taxonomy activity, as described above, was a simple way to introduce students to this
cognition theory. With the short-time in-class written assessment, I tested students’ ability to
analyze a research paper, with or without having a memory of it.
Results from the Bloom’s taxonomy activity showed that students were able to
successfully categorize most of the low-order cognitive level questions of their homework,
during the 9-week period, with minor fluctuations from the correct answers, ranging from 1 to 3
responses (Figure 1). However, the responses for the high-order cognitive level questions varied
throughout the course and a high number of low-order cognitive level categorization was
received as well, ranging from 1 to 6 responses (Figure 2). Although feedback was purposefully
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restricted, it is possible that students’ responses could have been more aligned to the correct
answers if more explanation was given regarding Bloom’s taxonomy levels throughout the
course.
An improvement in successfully categorizing the high-order cognitive level questions
was seen in the fifth week (week 7 in graph) of the study, but there was no persistent trend. An
explanation of this observation could be the fact that in order for someone to answer a question
that belongs to the levels of application, evaluation, synthesis or analysis, low-order cognitive
skills are also required - remembering and understanding facts. As a result, the students were
probably not able to identify these high-order cognitive level parts in these questions. In other
words, it is valid to say that students were not able or unsure how to categorize these high-
order cognitive level parts of these questions, beyond the low-order cognitive level ones with
which they were familiar.
Figure 1. Successful (color) and unsuccessful (grey shade) student responses for each
low-order cognitive level question per course week.
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
week 3 week 4 week 5 week 6 week 7 week 8 week 9 week 10 week 11
Re
cord
ed
re
spo
nse
s
Questions of low-order cognitive skills
knowledge
comprehension
application
analysis
synthesis
evaluation
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Figure 2. Successful (color) and unsuccessful (grey shade) student responses for each
high-order cognitive level question per course week.
The results of short-time in-class assessment (Table 1) following the order of in-class
and then homework showed that students’ ability to recognize the aim of an experiment during
the in-class activity was not as strong as when they had time to read the whole paper as
homework. This is probably due to limited time given for the in-class activity. However, it could
also imply that students’ critical thinking, considered as high-order cognitive skills, were not as
developed as the low-order ones, aligning with the results of the Bloom’s taxonomy activity.
Please note that I am making the assumption that identifying the hypothesis of a research
experiment involves high-order cognitive thinking compared to reporting results, which usually
requires only comprehension, a low-order cognitive level. In the reversed order, when students
had already seen the questions as homework, they did not answer the “what?” question as
clearly as they had previously done. An explanation for this outcome could be the content of the
excerpt chosen and also the fact that the students probably remembered the overall study’s aim
since they had spent a class discussing about this paper, but could not clearly retrieve
information on the findings of this study by looking at the excerpt.
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
week 3 week 4 week 5 week 6 week 7 week 8 week 9 week 10 week 11
Re
cord
ed r
esp
on
ses
Questions of high-order cognitive skills
knowledge
comprehension
application
analysis
synthesis
evaluation
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Table 1. Results of short-time in-class written assessment
In conclusion, a progress towards high-order cognitive skills was obvious in this class.
Incorporating short-time activities into undergraduate biology courses, such as the ones
presented here, can have a positive effect on students’ high-order cognitive skills development
and also inform the instructor about the course itself, regarding learning goals and outcomes.
References
1. Bissell, A. and P. Lemons. 2006. A New Method for Assessing Critical Thinking in the Classroom. BioScience, 56:66-72.
2. Bloom, S. and D. Krathwohl. 1956. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain. New York: Longmans.
3. Crowe A., Dirks C., and Wenderoth M. 2008. Biology in bloom: Implementing Bloom’s taxonomy to enhance student learning in biology. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 7:368-381.
4. DeHaan R. 2009. Teaching creativity and inventive problem solving in science. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 8:172-181.
5. Handelsman J., Miller S., Pfund C. 2007. Scientific Teaching. W.H. Freeman, New York.
6. Miller S., Pfund C., Pribbenow C., and Handelsman J. 2008. Scientific teaching in practice. Science, 322:1329-1330.
Acknowledgments
The researcher would like to thank HHMI Teaching Fellowship 2011-2012, for offering a teaching
fellowship and an opportunity for Education Research.
Order Activity/Question *why? *what?
1 In-class 4/9 9/9
2 Homework 8/9 9/9
Order Activity/Question *why? *what?
2 In-class 8/8 4/8
1 Homework 7/8 7/8
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Reflection
“Critical Analyses in Microbiology” is a discussion-based course aiming to help students develop
their critical thinking skills by reading different research papers each week and answering
questions, either as homework or as in-class activities. The study, presented above, was
conducted during my first teaching experience in an undergraduate Microbiology course (300-
level) and it was an optional part of my scientific teaching training during the Teaching Fellows
program at UW – Madison.
The main aspect of this research study was to examine the critical thinking development of
students as they get informed about Bloom’s taxonomy cognition theory. Designing a Bloom’s
taxonomy activity, as described above, was a simple way to introduce students to this
information. With the short-time in-class written assessment, I aimed testing students’ ability to
analyze a piece of a research paper that may or may not have previously seen as their
homework assignment.
In brief, I concluded that undergraduate students are able to comprehend and remember
information, but they have difficulty in recognizing and engaging in high-order cognitive
thinking, especially under time pressure. Critical thinking can only be developed with practice
and classes such as “Critical Analyses in Microbiology” are great learning environment for
undergraduate students to succeed this. There are a few limitations in the study design that do
not allow solid conclusions to be drawn at this point. For example, the sample size of this study
was rather small (n=8), thus further research is needed to verify these findings. Furthermore,
providing more feedback to students throughout the course could have yielded more positive
results. If I taught the same course again, I would give students more information on Bloom’s
taxonomy, as well as providing them with examples of homework questions belonging to each
Bloom’s category. I would also test more research papers, during the short-time in-class
assessment, in order to cancel out the effect of content in excerpt that can be a limiting factor in
this study. Finally, I would like to look at these results as an internal evaluation of the courses
that aim to promote students’ critical thinking. Activities similar to the ones presented can be
used as an assessment tool and verify the learning objectives of a course.
This was my first experience in conducting and presenting a biology education research study
and it helped me discover my personal interests in this area, which subsequently lead to a post-
doc position in biology education in WISCIENCE in 2015. Classes that focus on critical thinking
are necessary in any STEM discipline, as this is the major characteristic of scientific thinking.
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TEACHING AS RESEARCH
INTERNSHIP PROJECT REPORT
Teaching as research can be summarized as a circular process in this order: 1. Plan
teaching 2. Conduct this plan and collect data 3. Analyze the data-Draw conclusions, 4.
Make changes-Plan new teaching. When teaching as research is transparent to students,
it can be an alternate way for students to comprehend the scientific way of thinking that
need to have as future scientists or, otherwise stated, advance their high-order
cognitive skills.
This report has been produced as the core project of my Delta internship, fulfilling the
requirements towards a Delta Certificate in Teaching and Learning.
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Advancing the 4C's (Critical thinking, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity)
through social bookmarking and collaborative discussions in an undergraduate physics class.
Kyriaki Chatzikyriakidou, Ph.D., Duncan Carlsmith, Ph.D.
University of Wisconsin – Madison
Abstract
Social bookmarking technology is gathering interest in education especially in the recent
years and knowledge-related social network platforms are being built for use in education. The
aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of a) using Diigo, for online posts and discussions
about physics research papers, as well as b) group discussions in collaborative learning
classrooms (CLC), on students’ learning in an undergraduate physics class, as described by the
4C’s (critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity) provided by the National
Education Association. Each week, students bookmarked a physics research paper, related to
the topic being taught in theory class and the following week, they commented on 5 research
papers, posted by their peers, followed by grading. Students’ preferences about Diigo and CLC
participation were investigate through pre- and post-surveys, covering all the areas of interest
of this study: critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity. In-person interviews,
with a selected research paper, were conducted with low- and high- Diigo activity students, in
order to evaluate any imporvement in their critical thinking. Students stated that their
collaboration and communication skills, as well as creativity improved mainly due to their
participation in the weekly CLC discussions, compared to online Diigo discussions. Posting
participation in Diigo platform was higher than commenting participation throughout the 6
weeks of this study and although participation was sometimes limited to 50% of the
participants, high grades were recorded for both posts and comments. In-person interviews
showed that in general, high-activity Diigo students were more confident about reading the
research paper and identifying the main results. Regarding their personal opinion about Diigo,
all students admitted that it was a time commitment, however, the high-Diigo activity students,
perceived this in a positive manner, compared to the low-activity ones. Due to the small sample
size of this study, further research is needed to validate whether there is significant effect of
online discussions on students’ critical thinking skills, as well as effect of active learning
strategies, on students collaboration, communication and creativity skills.
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Introduction
The National Education Association (NEA) encourages educators to adapt their teaching
methods so as the ground for development of four main categories of skills (4 C’s) is offered to every
student they instruct: critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity for entrepreneurship
success (10). According to this report, these are the skills that the 21st century workforce should be
equipped with, in order for us to observe success in any discipline. These skills can be developed when
instruction takes place in interactive environments. Cooperative learning experiences can be
constructed in classroom if the five elements: positive interdependence, promoted face-to-face
interaction, individual accountability, social skills and group processing, are met as described by
Johnson, Johnson and Smith (6).
Almost a decade ago, Hopson et al. published a study, supporting the use of technology in
classroom in order to improve high-order thinking skills of fifth- and sixth-grade students. Minimal but
positive effect of technology, as meant by using a computer in classroom for learning, on student
acquisition of high-order thinking skills was found, through assessment with a Likert-type questionnaire,
designed for eight psychological dispositions (5). More recently, a cooperative environment with
interactive lectures was designed to teach quantum physics in an undergraduate physics class. Authors
suggested that significant gains in students’ achievements (expressed as exam grades) were observed, in
comparison to traditional teaching of the same class (11). In another study, pre-instructional cognitive
profile of undergraduate students in an introductory physics course was not found important for
learning gain, but for final performance of the same students (1).
Social bookmarking technology is gathering interest in education especially in the recent years
and knowledge-related social network platforms are being built for use in education. An example of this
technology is Diigo (Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff), a bookmarking social
network, with the aim of aiding participants to organize information, join groups of individuals with the
same scholarly interests and discuss the information posted. Farwell and Waters stressed the issue of
higher education costs and the increasing enrollment of students to online classes since 2008. At the
same time, authors interviewed students of a social media class that were using social bookmarking
activities and concluded that the use of this technology has positive effect on student’s learning (3). On
a different scientific field, under similar considerations, wiki pages, blogs and podcasts are already used
as Web tools for collaborative clinical practice and education. Positive results, related to enhancement
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of learning and learner’s engagement and collaboration have been found, although more feedback from
current users is needed (7).
A recent study, found the use of Diigo highly correlated to advancement of students’ critical
thinking, as it is designed to support reading-to-argue skills (8). The aim of this study was to evaluate the
effect of using Diigo, for online posts and discussions about physics research papers, as well as group
discussions in collaborative learning classrooms (CLC), on students’ learning in an undergraduate physics
class, as described by the 4C’s (critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity).
Approach
Physics course and classroom environment
Physics 241 surveys modern physics. It covers the special and general theories of relativity,
quantum mechanics, atomic physics, molecular physics, condensed matter physics, nuclear physics,
astrophysics, cosmology, and biophysics. Students attended a lecture class three times a week and there
was an additional weekly discussion, which focused on student small group problem solving and various
training activities, taking place in a collaborative learning classroom (CLC).
A CLC classroom is specially designed for interactive group work and is equipped with high-tech
devices that students can use during their discussions. Each CLC has six pods, that each can facilitate
approximately 8 students with an individual screen monitor, where students can project their work. The
instructor has the ability to project one pod’s screen to every pod’s screen and in the same way, the
white-board projector can be projected to each pod’s screen. All discussion of this class, happened in
the same room and an image of it, is shown below.
Image 1. Collaborative Learning Classroom
(CLC) where weekly discussions took place.
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In – class student training
Use of software LaTex
Students were introduced to LaTex, a software package that is designed for creating and
writing formulas in a text document. Students were firstly asked to read about LaTex on their
own, through related webpages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX and http://www.latex-
project.org) and during the following weekly discussion, they created personal accounts at
writelatex.com. The instructor talked about the basics of this software package and students
experienced their first writing with LaTex with a short assignment given by the instructor. After
this training, all subsequent homework of this class was completed using LaTex and submitted
electronically.
Use of library physics database
Campus Library User Education (CLUE) is a multimedia tutorial for college-level research
tools and strategies, offered by the UW-Madison Libraries. In this class, students were firstly
asked to watch online two tutorials (http://clue.library.wisc.edu/index.html and
http://www.vtstutorials.co.uk/he/tutorial/physics) and then received a 20min. introduction to
library research from a librarian affiliated with the physics department. Afterwards, they
received further guidelines from the instructor on how to perform a search on physics news and
journal articles.
Social community
Posting and commenting research papers with Diigo platform
Diigo (diigo.com) is a social bookmarking tool, specifically designed for knowledge management.
Students were asked to sign up into Physics 241 Diigo group (created by the instructor) and
participate in the Diigo activity. Rubrics on bookmarking and commenting physics research
papers were constructed and given to students at the beginning of the class (Appendix II). Each
week, students bookmarked a physics research paper, related to the topic being taught in
theory class that same week. The following week, students had to comment on 5 research
papers, posted by their peers. This rotation of bookmarking and commenting (Figure 1) was
continued throughout the semester and students received a grade for each of these activities.
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Figure 1. Social bookmarking activity scheme
Assessement
Pre- and post-surveys
Students (n=30) who consented to participate in this study (IRB approved), were asked to fill in a
pre-survey and a post-survey. Pre- and post-surveys were composed of both multiple choice and
scale questions, covering all the areas of interest of this study: critical thinking, collaboration,
communication and creativity. The questions were designed based on the guide book
“Preparing 21st century students for a global society – An educator’s guide to the “Four Cs”
published by the National Education Association. Additionally, there were a few personal career
and development questions, such as interest in following a career in physics or interest in
reading physics research papers at spare time, prior or after taking this course. These surveys
were designed in order to evaluate the effect of using Diigo and participating in the CLC
discussions, on student’s learning, while taking into consideration students’ preferences. Control
groups, i.e. students not participating in these activities, were not applicable in this class, thus
the start and end time of the class were used to evaluate the differences before and after the
Diigo activity, with idnetical questions been asked in both, pre- and post- surveys.
In-person interviews
In order to evaluate the improvement in critical thinking of the students, in-person interviews
were conducted at the end of the semester in the same CLC classroom that discussions had
taken place. The students were given time to read part (pre-selected) of a physics research
Students bookmark
physics research papers
Students discuss on the content
of the previously bookmarked
papers
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paper, previously posted and commented by students on Diigo, and were subsequently asked to
elaborate on whether the hypothesis of the study was proven or not and explain why. The
research paper was written on new star formation in Maggelanic Clouds (2) and was chosen due
to its short length and low level of difficulty (content-free of mathematical formulas).
Interviewed students were chosen based on their participation in Diigo activities, selecting both
high- and low-activity pasticipants.
Results and Discussion
Overall, the participants of this class seemed to experience this learning environment
for first time. None of the students, responding to the survey, stated that they had prior
experience in using Diigo, and only 22% (n=9) had previously been in a collaborative learning
classroom (CLC). Although, posting and commenting physics research articles using Diigo, was
part of their course grade, it was small enough to have minimal effect on their final grade and
the incentive to do this extra work was clearly self-motivation and personal interest in learning
more about the course material.
Figure 1. Percentage of students reading the corresponding number of journal or news articles,
before, during or after the Physics 241 course (n=9).
The “parallel” question on number of physics news and journal articles in relation to
time (before, during and after) showed that students read many more articles during class,
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
0 1 2 3 4 5 8 10
journal articlesbefore
journal articlesduring
journal articlesafter
news articlesbefore
news articlesduring
news articlesafter
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compared to the beginning. In particular, before the course, all survey respondents indicated
that were reading none or one journal article, a behavior that shifted to at least one article
during the course. Also, the majority indicated that they will keep reading after class, with a
preference to physics news articles. The preference for news articles versus research articles,
could probably be explained by the more jargon-free language used for news articles and also
the more directly defined impact of research findings. To the question whether students
critically assess the information in the news articles, 75% and 78% replied either always, or
sometimes, in pre- and post- survey respectively. On the other hand, only 55% did the same for
journal articles prior taking this course, a number that switched to 75% at the end of the course.
This increase in evaluating the research findings presented in journal articles, at the end of the
course, may be correlated to the experience students gained in critically assessing the
information in the research articles they read during their participation to the Diigo activity. We
have to note here that students were instructed to read news articles from validated websites,
aiming researchers and the source of the news article was monitored by the instructor, while
participating in the Diigo online community.
In the pre-survey, students were asked four simple questions each for every one of the
four C’s – critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity and whether the Diigo
activity or the CLC discussions were more effective for them to develop these skills (Figure 2).
CLC discussions were chosen for all questions against Diigo activity. Although the pre-survey
took place at a time when students were using Diigo and CLC classroom for almost a month, this
result is probably attributed to the fact that physical interactions among students are better
perceived than the online ones, regarding the development of these skills.
In the post-survey, similar questions but more elaborated, were asked, regarding the
four (C’s) different skills that we hoped students will advance throughout these activities
(Figures 3 & 4).
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Figure 2. Mean value for each question posed for both Diigo platform and collaborative learning
classroom (CLC) (these questions were used in the pre-survey).
Figure 3. Mean value for each question posed for both Diigo platform and collaborative learning
classroom (CLC) (these questions were used in the post-survey).
0 1 2 3 4 5
provides a collaborative learning environment
encourages critical thinking regarding physicsresearch
encourages innovative thinking and ideas
helps develop communication skills (clarity inspeech when elaborating your concepts)
Diigo CLC
0 1 2 3 4 5
Articulate thoughts and ideas effectively using oral,written, and nonverbal communication skills in a variety
of forms and contexts.
Listen effectively to decipher meaning, includingknowledge, values, attitudes, and intentions.
Use communication for a range of purposes (e.g. toinform, instruct, motivate, and persuade).
Use multiple media and technologies, and know how toassess impact and their effectiveness a priori.
Communicate effectively in diverse environments(including multilingual and multicultural).
Diigo CLC
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Figure 4. Mean value for each question posed for both Diigo platform and collaborative learning
classroom (CLC) (these questions were used in the post-survey).
Students stated that their collaboration and communication skills, as well as creativity
improved mainly due to their participation in the weekly CLC discussions. Although
improvement of skills was indicated, when using the Diigo platform, average values of
preference were lower than those for the CLC discussions. We have to note here, that the
sample size of respondents is quite small to draw any solid conclusions, however there is a
preference for CLC discussions participation over Diigo activity participation, from the beginning
until the end of this Physics 241 class, regarding communication, collaboration and creative
thinking skills improvement. Regarding critical thinking, students were asked at the end of class
whether they believed CLC discussions or Diigo activity was more important for advancement of
their ability to assess and analyze information in research articles. In this question, CLC and Diigo
were found almost equal with mean preference values of 3.13 and 3.00, respectively.
In Diigo, posting participation was higher than commenting participation throughout the
6 weeks of this study. In total, 234 research papers and over 600 comments were posted on the
class Diigo community. Although no coding analysis was completed on the content of comments
posted, according to the five categories of types of interaction (self-reflection,
elaboration/clarification, alternative complementary proposal, internalization/appropriation,
conflict/disagreement and support) that Gao published in a similar study (4), majority of
0 20 40 60 80 100
Exercise flexibility and willingness to be helpful inmaking necessary compromises to accomplish a
common goal.
Demonstrate ability to work effectively andrespectfully with diverse teams.
Assume shared responsibility for collaborativework, and value the individual contributions made
by each team member.
Develop, implement, and communicate new ideasto others effectively
Be open and responsive to new and diverseperspectives; incorporate group input and feedback
into the work
Demonstrate originality and inventiveness in workand understand the real world limits to adopting
new ideas
Diigo CLC
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comments belonged to the self-reflection and elaboration categories. This is not surprising,
since students were asked to summarize the findings of the paper they were posting, in order to
offer basis for further online discussions. High grades for both posts and comments were
recorded, although participation was sometimes limited to 50% of the class. This may be
partially attributed to the high load of journal articles reading that needed to be done, prior to
posting and commenting activities.
Figure 5. Average grades and number of participants in Diigo posts and comments for each
week of class.
In-person interviews were conducted with high- and low-Diigo activity students, in order
to investigate the effect of this platform on the critical thinking of students, when they read a
physics research paper. Although the chosen paper was easy to read and the findings were
straightforward, its hypothesis was not clearly stated. Three low-activity and two high-activity
students were interviewed voluntarily. Activity (participation) in commenting was used as the
main factor to choose students, rather than posting activity, as critical thinking was more
necessary for writing a comment, than picking a paper to post. To the question whether they
remember this paper form the previous Diigo post, only one high-activity student stated “yes”.
Regarding the proof of the paper’s hypothesis, all students admitted that the hypothesis was
either not proven, or was partially proven but more information was needed in order to securely
state that it is proven. The low-activity students had a similar approach toward the paper
analysis, with more information seeking before they answered the interview questions and
3.38 3.43 3.50 3.59 3.36 3.50
2.96 3.08 3.45
3.81 3.28
3.59
23.00
19.00
20.00 13.00 16.00
11.00
28.00
23.00
24.00
16.00
22.00
16.00
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1 2 3 4 5 6week of instruction
Posts grades
Commentsgrades
Postingparticipants
Commentingparticipants
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giving incomplete descriptions of results. Another similar behavior observed in these students
was the fact that, they admitted they do not fully understand the paper or they thought they do
not have an advanced level of understanding physics research papers yet. On the other hand,
the high-activity students stated they do not know all about the methods used in this paper
(something that was not necessary), however the frequency of the phrase “I don’t know” was
much higher in the low-activity students interviews, compared to the high-activity ones. This
attitude of the low-activity students may be linked to a low confidence level in reading and
analyzing physics research papers, since these students had demonstrated minimal or no
commenting participation in Diigo.
The second part of the interview was a discussion about the Diigo and what students
thought about it. Although only two high-activity students were interviewed, they both
appreciated this activity and stated they learned a lot along with their physics course. Low-
activity students emphasized the time needed to complete these activities and stated this as the
primary reason for not participating. They were also aware of the fact that their grade will not
change significantly if they do not participate. High-activity students also admitted that it was a
commitment, however, it was worth the time and benefits earned. This difference in students’
explanations about Diigo, could be originated from self-motivation levels and personal interest
in learning. As a supporting mark to this argument, the average final course grade of the high-
activity (75.5%) students was ~10% higher than the grade of the low-activity (64.5%) ones.
However, no correlation was found between student’s grade and participation in posting or
commenting physics research papers. Similar results on behavior towards active reading
through Diigo were found by Lu and Deng, between two secondary school classes; a low- and a
high-performance one. The authors found a correlation between the number of notes the high-
performance students posted and their perception of this as important for their learning (9).
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References
1. Cappizo, M., S. Nuzzo & M. Zarcone. 2006. The impact of the pre-instructional cognitive
profile on learning gain and final exam of physics courses: A case study. European
Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 31, p.:717-727.
2. Casetti-Dinescu, D. I., C. Moni Bidin, T. M. Girard, Rène A. Mèndez, K. Vieira, V. I.
Korchagin & William F. van Altena. Recent star formation in leading arm of the
Magellanic stream. Unpublished. Available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.0517v1
3. Farwell, T. & R. Waters. 2010. Exploring the use of social bookmarking technology in
education: An analysis of students’ experiences using a course-specific Delicious.com
account. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, Vol. 6, p.:398-408.
4. Gao, F. 2013. A case study of using a social annotation tool to support collaboratively
learning. Internet and Higher Education, Vol. 17, p.:76-83.
5. Hopson, M., R. Simms & G. Knezek. 2001. Using a technology-enriched environment to
improve higher-order thinking skills. Journal of Research on Technology in Education,
Vol. 34, p.:109-119.
6. Jones, K. & J. Jones. 2008. Making cooperative learning work in the college classroom:
An application of the “Five Pillars” of cooperative learning to post-secondary instruction.
The journal of effective teaching Vol. 8, .p:61-76.
7. Kamel Boulos, M. N., I. Maramba & S. Wheeler. 2006. Wikis, blogs and podcasts: A new
generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education.
BMC Medical Education, Vol. 6 (41).
8. Lu, J. & L. Deng. 2013. Examining students’ use of online annotation tools in support of
argumentative reading. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, Vol. 29, p.:161-
171.
9. Lu, J. & L. Deng. 2012. Reading actively online: an exploratory investigation of online
annotation tools for inquiry learning. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, Vol.
38, p.:1-16.
10. National Education Association. 2012. Preparing 21st century students for a global
society – An educator’s guide to the “Four Cs”.
Available at http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/A-Guide-to-Four-Cs.pdf
11. Puente, S. & H. Swagten. 2012. Designing learning environments to teach interactive
Quantum Physics. European Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 37, p.:448-457.
Reflective statement on TAS project
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“How has your internship experience influenced your understanding of teaching-as-research, learning-through-diversity and learning communities? Teaching-as-Research
Teaching as research prepares the educator to scrutinize the teaching plan, while
considering learning goals and how students will achieve these goals throughout the class. It
could be summarized as: 1. Plan teaching 2. Conduct this plan and collect data 3. Analyze the
data-Draw conclusions, 4. Make changes-Plan new teaching. In Physics 241, the class which I
conducted my DELTA internship at, the primary teaching plan was modified by the main
instructor to contain innovative teaching elements, such as online bookmarking activities and
weekly discussions in a well-equipped with technology devices classroom. The purpose of
adding these new elements to the course was to expose students to an environment that could
advance their collaboration, communication and critical thinking skills. The primary investigator
and I planned out the research question we wanted to investigate with the primary hypothesis
that participation in the online bookmarking activity will advance students’ critical thinking.
Learning-through-Diversity As an international student, I wholeheartedly believe that learning can be enhanced
through diversity and this can entail different nationalities, educational backgrounds and
personal beliefs and opinions. Although majority of the Physics 241 class was US citizens, they
were exposed to different learning styles and ways of thinking among their peers, especially
those who regularly participated in the weekly discussions. Students had to work as groups
around a pod exchanging ideas or problem-solving regarding physics homework questions. In
the future, as a potential instructor, I would like to include the element of diversity in a course,
for example, by inviting international guest speakers who could ignite learning through a
different than mine perspective and foster the broadening of students’ horizons.
Learning Communities Science can be seen as an interdisciplinary and dynamic form of existence, and an
individual can be seen as exactly the same. However, for changes and improvement to happen,
interactions are needed and these interactions are best achieved inside communities. All DELTA
classes are structured with learning communities and I personally had many ideas formed during
our meetings, that otherwise wouldn’t have. In Physics 241, communities were formed every
week during the group discussions, as well as online communities (Diigo), via online discussions
on physics research papers. Students participated in both activities and I witnessed the fact that
these communities were contributory to students’ learning. Literature also supports the fact
that group discussions and interactive activities with peers are impactful teaching approaches
for an individual’s learning development path and I also wish to put an effort in implementing
them in classes that I may be the instructor of.
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APPENDIX I Instructional materials for teaching unit Bacterial “Social” Behavior Homework
(week 5 in Micro 305)
Assigned reading
Bacterial charity work leads to population-wide resistance. Lee H., Molla M., Cantor C. and
Collins J. 2010. Nature vol. 467 pp. 82-85.
Homework questions
One week before this class, students will be asked to read the paper and answer the following
questions:
Homework begins by asking students a low order cognitive level (Bloom’s taxonomy) question:
The authors of this paper proceeded on their research based on their findings of previous trials.
There is a series of 6-7 individual experiments (trials) that the authors completed for two
different antibiotics.
Provide the hypothesis and the main result for each of these experiments (pp. 82-83).
Figure Hypothesis Main result
1a
2a
2b
2d
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The next step is to move on towards high order cognitive levels (Bloom’s taxonomy) questions:
After an in-class discussion of question 1, students will work as groups and then as a class to
answer additional homework questions related to the assigned reading and specifically the
figures of the paper. Students are required to complete these questions before class, in order to
help their understanding and interpretation of experimental data. Questions are provided
below:
2) Study figure 1 of the paper. This figure presents the results of the first in series
experiment that the authors conducted. Describe in few sentences what was found and
is presented in 1b?
3) a) In figure 2b, describe the behavior of c10,6 and c10,12.
b) Why the mutant strain c10,12∆tnaA grows more under antibiotic stress, if it is unable to
produce indole (figure 2d)?
4) Discuss in groups of 3-4 students the implication of these findings on the treatment of a
disease when antibiotics are provided to the patient. Discuss specifically if the disease
will be curable when HRI and LRI strains are present at the infected area of the patient.
What experiments would you design in order to test your hypothesis?
You will be given 1 minute at the end to present your idea.
5) Study figure 1 of the paper. This figure presents the results of the first in the series of
experiments that the authors conducted. Describe in two sentences what was found
and presented in 1b?
6) a) In figure 2b, describe the behavior of c10,6 and c10,12.
c) Why does the mutant strain c10,12∆tnaA grow more under antibiotic stress, if it is
unable to produce indole (figure 2d)?
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In class activity
We know that bacteria work together by using a well-studied communication system called
Quorum Sensing (QS). During infection, bacteria talk to each other using QS to coordinate the
release of toxins.
Last year researchers from University of Nottingham presented at the Society for General
Microbiology's autumn meeting the use of bacteria defective in QS that can benefit from 'opting
out' of toxin production by Staphylococcus aureus during infection of waxworms. As a result the
overall severity of infection is reduced as fewer toxins are produced.
Discuss in groups of 3-4 students how the reduction of severity is mediated in this infection.
What experiment(s) would you design in order to test your hypothesis? What are the
implications of these findings on the treatment of a disease when antibiotics are provided to the
patient?
You will be given 1 minute at the end to present your idea.
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APPENDIX II
Rubric for Social Bookmarking Activity
4 3 2 1
Adds URL to a social bookmarking site
Posted beyond the required number of bookmarks to the class Diigo site.
Posted required number of bookmarks to the class Diigo site.
Posted fewer than the required number of bookmarks to the class Diigo site.
Did not post bookmarks to the class Diigo site.
Notes
Detailed student comments added to all of the notes/description of each bookmarked site. Comments are appropriate and useful.
Comments added to all of the notes/description of each bookmarked site. Comments are appropriate and useful.
Comments added to the notes/description of most bookmarked site. Comments are appropriate and useful.
No notes added to bookmarked sites. Comments are not appropriate or useful.
Tags
Appropriate keyword Tags are used for all bookmarked sites. No duplication of tags (eg. cat and cats are used as tags for websites about cats). Identifying Tag was added to all sites posted by an individual. (i.e initials, screenname)
Appropriate keyword Tags are used for all bookmarked sites but some duplication of tags (eg. singular and plural form of tags.) Identifying Tag was added to all sites posted by an individual. (i.e initials, screenname)
Appropriate keyword tags are used on most of the bookmarked sites. Identifying Tag was added to most of the sites posted by an individual. (i.e initials, screenname)
No tags. Identifying tags only.
Journal Article
Identified high-quality, relevant, and appropriate resources that support a course, subject, or unit of study in the curriculum for students’ use and/or teacher use.
Identified resources are mostly high quality, relevant, and appropriate and support a course, subject, or unit of study in the curriculum for students’ use and/or teacher use.
Identified resources are not all relevant and appropriate to support a course, subject, or unit of study in the curriculum for students’ use.
Identified resources are lacking in quality, relevance, or appropriateness to support a course, subject, or unit of study in the curriculum for students’ use.
Validity All sites Bookmarked were checked for validity.
All sites Bookmarked were checked for validity.
Most sites bookmarked were valid.
Websites were not checked for validity.
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Rubric for comment post on Diigo
4 3 2 1
Relevance Comment includes link to related article graded on quality and relevance.
Comment does not include link to related article graded on quality and relevance.
Overall structure
Comment is of appropriate length – one paragraph summarizing briefly each of the main findings of the study.
Comment is of appropriate length – one paragraph summarizing the main findings of the study.
Comment is not of appropriate length or missing main findings of study.
Comment is too short to elaborate on any findings of the study.
Language/ tone
Appropriate tone/formal language is used.
Informal language, like peer-to-peer conversation, is used.
Critical thinking
Identified hypothesis of the study and understanding of findings, regarding support or rejection of hypothesis, are stated. Reader briefly explains why.
Identified hypothesis of the study and understanding of findings, regarding support or rejection of hypothesis, are stated.
Identified hypothesis of the study is stated however understanding of findings, regarding support or rejection of hypothesis is not.
No identified hypothesis is given.
Conclusion sentence
Reader’s personal opinion is clear and based on current scientific knowledge.
Reader’s personal opinion is not clear or based on current scientific knowledge.
Reader’s opinion is poor and not scientific.
Reader’s opinion is not related to main findings of the study.
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Associate Level
Teaching –As-Research
Associates can do the following:
How this outcome was met :
Know that a body of literature and knowledge exists concerning high-impact, evidence-based teaching practices.
Through Delta classes and HHMI Teaching Fellowship training.
Define and recognize the value of the Teaching-as-Research process, and how it can be used for ongoing enhancement of learning.
By completing my internship project’s proposal as well as final reflection on this project.
Know how to access the literature and existing knowledge about teaching, learning and assessment, in a discipline or broadly.
Through literature research for my internship project, as well as through the second artifact of this portfolio.
Describe and recognize the value of realistic well-defined, achievable, measurable and student-centered learning goals.
Addressed at a large extent during the HHMI Teaching Fellows program and described in the first artifact.
Describe several assessment techniques and recognize the value of their alignment with particular types of learning goals.
Relevant knowledge gained by attending DBER online courses.
Describe and recognize the value of evidence-based effective instructional practices and materials.
Relevant knowledge gained by attending DBER online courses
Describe a “full-inquiry” cycle
Demonstrated through my teaching-as-research (internship) project.
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Learning Communities
Associates can do the following:
How this outcome was met :
Know that a body of literature and knowledge exists associated with learning communities and their impact on undergraduate learning.
Through my internship project, while addressing one of the DELTA pillars: learning communities.
Define the characteristics of undergraduate learning communities (LCs).
Knowledge gained through teaching undergraduate courses at UW-Madison.
Describe the impact of LCs on student learning. Throughout my internship project, which partially examined learning communities in a classroom.
Describe and recognize the value of LC strategies that promote positive interdependence between learners so as to accomplish learning goals.
Explained in the internship project’s reflection.
Describe and recognize the value and issues of establishing LCs comprising a diverse group of learners.
Explained in the internship project’s reflection.
Describe techniques for creating a LC within a learning environment. Through teaching a discussion-based class during my Teaching Fellowship program.
Recognize the value of and participate in local professionally-focused learning communities associated with teaching and learning.
One of them was our DELTA internship group, another one was presenting a poster of my internship project to the Teaching & Learning symposium. Also, facilitating the local (Madison) community discussions of the MOOC course “An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching”.
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Learning through Diversity
Associates can do the following:
How this outcome was met:
Know that a body of literature and knowledge exists associated with diversity and its impact on accomplishing learning goals.
Through my post-doc position on Biology Education Research with discussions on diversity in a college classroom.
Define and recognize the scope of diversity in learning environments, of both students and instructor.
Through the internship project’s reflection discussing this DELTA pillar.
Recognize the impact of diversity on student learning, in particular how diversity can enhance learning, and that inequities can also negatively impact learning if not addressed.
Through personal reading on this topic and discussions in our DELTA internship class.
Describe how an instructor’s beliefs and biases can influence student learning.
Through personal reading on this topic and discussions in our DELTA internship class.
Recognize the value of drawing on diversity in the development of their teaching plans (including content, teaching practices and assessments) to foster learning.
Discussed during the Teaching Fellows program, our DELTA internship class, as well as other DELTA classes.
Describe several learning-through-diversity (LtD) techniques and strategies (e.g. creating a welcoming environment, learning communities).
Discussed with my internship project advisor as part of my research project.
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Practitioner Level
Teaching –As-Research
Practitioners can do the following:
How this outcome was met in the Delta Certificate:
Develop a deeper understanding of the knowledge concerning high-impact, evidence-based teaching practices.
Through attending the MOOC “An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching” in 2014.
Develop a Teaching-as-Research plan for a limited teaching and learning project.
Necessary part of DELTA internship project.
Execute a Teaching-as-Research plan for a limited teaching and learning project.
Necessary part of DELTA internship project.
Show the integrated use of Teaching-as-Research, Learning Community and Learning-through-Diversity to accomplish learning goals.
Explained in my internship project’s reflection.
Learning Communities
Practitioners can do the following:
How this outcome was met in the Delta Certificate:
Develop a deeper understanding of the knowledge concerning LCs and their impact on undergraduate student learning.
By attending the collaborative classroom teaching sessions of Physics 241 during my internship project.
Integrate one or more LC strategies into a teaching plan so as to accomplish learning goals and learning-through-diversity
Through planning to teach a discussion-based course (Micro 305) during the Teaching Fellows program.
Implement one or more LC strategies for students in a teaching experience.
While teaching the course Micro 305 during the Teaching Fellows program.
Contribute to local professionally-focused learning communities associated with teaching and learning.
Facilitating the local community discussions of the MOOC “An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching”.
Show the integrated use of Teaching-as-Research, Learning Community and Learning-through-Diversity to accomplish learning goals.
Explained in my internship project’s reflection.
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Learning through Diversity Practitioners can do the following:
How this outcome was met in the Delta Certificate:
Develop a deeper knowledge of the body of literature concerning diversity and its impact on accomplishing learning goals.
Through personal reading on this topic and discussions in our DELTA internship class.
Examine own beliefs and biases, including how they may influence their students’ learning.
Through discussions during my training in the Teaching Fellows program.
Determine the diverse backgrounds among a group of students, and consider the opportunities and challenges of the findings on each student’s learning.
While teaching Micro 305, presented in this portfolio, as well as other courses, such as Micro 304 class and Food Micro 324.
Create a teaching plan that incorporates content and teaching practices responsive to the students’ backgrounds.
By making modifications to a particular teaching plan, so it serves students’ needs.
Integrate one or more LtD techniques and strategies in a teaching plan so as to use students’ diversity to enhance the learning of all.
Through planning a teaching unit for Micro 305, during the Teaching Fellows program.
Implement one or more LtD strategies in a teaching experience. Through teaching Micro 305, a discussion-based course, during the Teaching Fellows program.
Show the integrated use of Teaching-as-Research, Learning Community and Learning-through-Diversity to accomplish learning goals.
Explained in my internship project’s reflection.