My course, Education in Life Sciences, creates opportunities for undergraduate biology students (and me) to enhance educational skills. Major course goals include increasing awareness and critical analysis of literature related to post-secondary life sciences education, increasing skills in facilitating evidence-based learning strategies, increasing meta-cognition through reflective practice and promoting positive change beyond the traditional boundaries of the course.
At some point during the course, a student inevitably asks - “If we know so much about effective teaching in higher education, why do so many of my courses suck?”
We address this question in a Two Hour Task Force on Barriers to Educational Innovation in which students interact with visiting local representatives of various stakeholder groups to better understand the disconnection between the innovations they are discovering in the literature and the practices they are experiencing in their classrooms. Students and visitors then brainstorm ways to reduce barriers to innovation on campus and collaboratively develop a list of Task Force Recommendations.
In this shortened conference version, collaborative teams of participants will identify barriers and make recommendations through discussion with representative stakeholders from groups such as university administration, students, research faculty, educational developers, classroom designers, edutech providers, educational publishers etc.
Participants in this session can expect to: i) assess the appropriateness of the Two Hour Task Force format as a strategy for empowering students as change agents in their own courses; ii) be more aware of the variety of barriers to implementation of educational innovation at their own institutions; iii) experience learning in a dedicated active learning classroom; iv) have fun collaborating with colleagues.
Supporting Literature includes:
Brownell, S.E. . & Tanner, K. D. (2012) Barriers to faculty pedagogical change: Lack of training, time, incentives, and . . . tensions with professional identity?. CBE – Life Sciences Education. 11: 339-346. DOI: 10.1187/cbe.12-09-0163
Henderson, C. & Dancy, M. H. (2007) Barriers to the use of research-based instructional strategies: The influence of both individual and situational characteristics. Physical Review Special Topics – Physics Education Research. 3: 1-14. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.3.020102
Schneckenberg, D. (2009) Understanding the real barriers to technology-enhanced innovation in higher education. Education Research. 51: 411-424. DOI:10.1080/00131880903354741
Seidel, S. B. & Tanner, K. D. (2013) “What if students revolt?” – Considering student resistance: Origins, options, and opportunities for investigation. CBE – Life Sciences Education. 12: 586-595. DOI: 10.1187/cbe-13-09-0190
Professor Tom Haffie is primarily dedicated to scholarship and practice in higher education. He has been most significantly influenced by ideas at the intersection of complexity science and education. Such approaches see the instructor and students as diverse nodes of an interconnected... Read More →
