The Biology Department recognized the hard work and innovation of all of our Learning Assistants (LAs) by presenting “The Outstanding Learning Assistant Award” to a group of Biology LAs for the fall 2021 semester. These students presented a poster that was judged by the Biology Research & Honors Committee to best outline procedures that will improve teaching in our undergraduate courses. Financial support for this award is made possible by Professor Emerita Elizabeth Godrick.
Top award:
Cayla Bilyeu, Isabel Jang, Vaughn St. Marie, and Nikolas Martinez received the top award for Biology LAs for their presentation on the topic of templates for how to survive lab with Easter eggs. Here is the abstract from the group’s presentation:
BI211/315 Physiology lab is a teamwork-based project course with intensive writing assignments. We find that many students are not familiar with concepts surrounding experimental design, lab procedures and statistical analysis. Students have expressed concerns that they are overwhelmed by the number of resources that are available to them and often fail to follow directions. To solve this problem and to address students’ request for clearer templates, existing assignment templates will be condensed and simplified to provide students with a single resource that clearly lays out requirements.This makes it essential that students carefully read through these resources to gain understanding of the lab course. In addition to templates, a virtual easter egg hunt will be implemented that would be spread throughout their resources to ensure compliance in preparation. Consequently we will be re-purposing the already implemented Kahoot quiz game system to test this compliance. To ensure proper execution of the Kahoots, an instruction guide for the LAs will give advice on how to engage students during Kahoot, provide key points to mention about each assignment, and go over frequently asked questions from previous years. The three of these additions will be synchronized to provide a more streamlined experience for students.
A close runner-up:
Tanner Boyd, Emma Cho, Maddie Hurysz, and Ethan Lieberman were the runners up for their presentation on using Kahoot to promote BI 107 lab participation. Here is the abstract from the group’s presentation:
In BU introductory biology, lab sections allow students to engage with the course material through hands-on learning and experimentation. These lab sections include teaching powerpoints and class discussions which reiterate concepts pertaining to the lab’s topic and preview the experimental procedures. Generally, participation features the same, small handful of students answering the instructor’s questions. In order to revitalize this initial lab segment, Kahoot, an online, interactive learning game, will be used to encourage students to participate in discussion, and inform instructors of which material needs reinforcement. LAs will create and lead weekly Kahoot games to encourage greater teaching opportunities for them. Each student will sign on with their name and participation will be monitored within the game that tracks their answers and progress. Kahoot will be used to monitor attendance, thus incentivizing participation. This model can be implemented as a means of consistent check-ins and reinforcement of material, or at the end of the lecture to summarize the main points before the students begin in-class experimentation. Because of its active stimulation and class-wide participation, we hypothesize that implementing Kahoot will not only promote engagement, but also solidify understanding and give weekly feedback to the instructors.
Congratulations to the award-winners and thanks to all the hardworking LAs who participated in the presentations. More information on the Learning Assistant Program can be found here.