Guest Speaker- Jenny Knight

Dr. Jenny Knight has a B.A. in Biology from Cornell University, a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Michigan, and worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Developmental Genetics at the University of Colorado Boulder before joining the faculty.  She has been teaching undergraduates for over twenty years, ranging from freshmen-level genetics to senior-level developmental biology, along with graduate courses in pedagogy.  After transitioning from lab bench to biology education research in 2004, she has developed concept assessments, studied the benefits of clickers and peer discussion, problem solving, and stimulating self-regulation and metacognition. She has also worked extensively in faculty development, coordinating the MCDB Science Education Initiative at CU and the Mountain West Regional National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in Biology. She has served as the president of the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research (SABER) and is the current Editor in Chief for the open access journal CourseSource, which publishes college-level active learning lessons.

Host- Pam Kalas

Title- Helping Introductory Biology Students Learn: metacognition, courseware, and core concepts

Brief abstract: Most of us do not naturally excel at awareness or regulation of our learning behaviors. We have been studying student learning strategies in an introductory genetics course to determine if strategy use and accuracy in reporting correlate with higher performance. I will discuss how using courseware to take advantage of self-testing opportunities improves students’ performance, and that student awareness of study approaches may improve their learning. In addition, I’ll discuss the journal CourseSource, and new projects on helping faculty incorporate biology core concepts into their courses.