Workshops

DeLTA Kickoff Event:

David Asai, PhD
Senior Director of Science Education
Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Will present a Lecture
“Neither Left nor Right”

Master’s Hall, Georgia Center for Continuing Education
Friday, August 30, 2019
11:15 a.m.
1197 South Lumpkin Street
Athens, Georgia 30602

Past Events

Spring 2019

On April 26, 2019 the SEER Center hosted the Spring meeting.  The meeting included an opening lecture, poster session, SEER Center business meeting and 2 concurrent workshops.

Opening Seminar

“Anatomy of STEM teaching in North American Universities”
Jordan Harshman, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Auburn University
10:00 am to 11:00 am Room G-5 Aderhold

After decades of science education reform efforts, Harshman and colleagues (Stains et al., 2018) have published a landmark characterization of STEM teaching practices in North American universities. Based on classroom observations from over 2000 classes taught by more than 500 STEM faculty members across 25 institutions, they were able to show that didactic (lecture) practices still predominate. Interestingly, they also found that classroom layouts and course sizes were not major barriers to adoption of more student-centered practices. Harshman will share data comparing the use of student-centered learning from all STEM disciplines.

Poster Session and Lunch

11:00 am to 12:00 pm First floor hallway Aderhold

Posters and discussion. Feel free to put your poster up any time that morning.

12:00 pm to 1:00 pm Room 119 Aderhold

SEER Center Business meeting will occur during lunch.

Workshops

An Introduction to R Statistical Programming for Discipline-Based Educational Research
1:00 pm to 5:00 pm Room 228 Aderhold

Have you already collected data, perhaps to fulfill the graduate certificate in university teaching, and would love to learn to use a free statistical platform to analyze your data? Join invited speaker, Jordan Harshman, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Auburn University to learn to use the R platform. The last hour or so of the workshop will include a targeted exploration of a real data set with a specific research question in mind, so bring your own data or be ready to analyze data from the COPUS study.
Please download both the R platform (install first, this is the actual language) and the RStudio front-end (install second, this program makes coding much easier) on your own computer before the workshop; both free: https://mirror.las.iastate.edu/CRAN/ and https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/#download
Speaker: Jordan Harshman

Planning an Educational Research Study
1:00 pm to 3:00 pm Room 201 Aderhold

Have you thought about taking what you observed “went well” (or didn’t) this term and turning it into a study? Colleen Kuusinen, UGA’s Assistant Director of CTL will lead an exploration into study design and analysis.
Speaker: Colleen Kuusinen

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Summer 2017

Bioethics

Dr. Cameron Brewer, assistant professor of philosophy at Central Connecticut State, lead a workshop about strategies for incorporating ethical discussions into ecology, environmental science, and other science courses. He currently co-teaches an honors course on environmental ethics using invasive species as a theme and a course on philosophy of science. His interest in highlighting the ethical responsibilities of scientists has led him to develop case studies of individuals (mainly politicians) making large-scale societal decisions without using the available scientific data.

Introduction to Teaching Bioethics
Dr. Brewer introduced himself and provided an overview of some of the projects he has used to teach bioethics. All participants were encouraged to discuss the types of topics they are interested in as a starting point, and then Dr. Brewer discussed strategies for integrating content and projects. Participants used the remaining time to view reading materials on Google drive and select projects for their own courses.

Incorporating Bioethics into Science Classes
In this session, instructors collaborated to develop teaching materials for their courses.

Pre-Workshop Activity

Spring 2017

Introduction to Science Education Research Methods Workshop Series

This 8-part workshop series was designed to provide graduate students and post-docs an introduction to some of the methods used to collect and analyze education research data. Supported by the UGA Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning, STEM education research faculty presented methods that participants could use to conduct their own study of teaching and learning.

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Human Test Subjects and Approval by the Institutional Review Board

Leaders: Kim Fowler, UGA IRB & Julie Stanton, UGA Cellular Biology
January 12, 2017
Work with human subjects requires an extra level of attention to protect private and sensitive information. This workshop introduced participants to the steps in preparing their study to ensure it complies with all institutional Review Board (IRB) policies. Workshop leaders illustrated the requirements and discussed some flexibility of policies including exemptions that may be used to design a project that can grow organically. They also shared their experiences and sample materials.

Workshop Presentation – Fowler
Workshop Presentation – Stanton
Workshop 1 Worksheet

Introduction to Qualitative Research

Leader: Jennifer Jo Thompson, UGA Crop and Soil Sciences
January 25, 2017
Qualitative research methods help us understand how social phenomena operate in “real world” vs. experimental settings. It aims to uncover meaningful categories in data, and to generate, rather than test, hypotheses. In this workshop, they examined the rational for using qualitative methods in education research and identified the kinds of research questions that qualitative methods can best address. They also briefly discussed the major data collection and analysis methods to gain a basic understanding of how to analyze qualitative data through coding.

Workshop Presentation

Conducting Interviews

Leader: Paula Lemons, UGA Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
February 9, 2017
To investigate questions about education, researchers frequently rely on interviews with students, faculty, and other education stakeholders. Informative interviews start with good research questions and build on theory and the primary literature. The interviewer plays a vital role in creating rapport and probing the interviewee. In this workshop they completed a case study that provided insights into how to create an interview guide and conduct an interview.

Workshop Presentation

Surveys Construction & Analysis

Leader: Peggy Brickman, UGA Plant Biology
February 22, 2017
This session provided examples of questions that call for this type of research. Participants composed and evaluated potential survey items and designed implementation plans. They also learned to create surveys using Google forms or Qualtrics.

Workshop Presentation

Classroom Observations

Leader: Tessa Andrews, UGA Genetics
March 16, 2017
In this session, participants learned about a classroom observation protocol and practiced using the protocol, allowing the opportunity to consider the benefits and challenges of observation protocols as data collection tools.

Workshop Presentation

Quantitative Methods

Leader: Jennifer Kaplan, UGA Statistics
March 29, 2017
Participants were presented with research questions from actual studies and asked to design the quantitative data collection plan. Participants then discussed the design and analysis issues involved given the nature of the data and context.

Theoretical Frameworks in Education Research in STEM

Leader: Julie Luft, UGA Mathematics and Science Education
April 12, 2017
In this session, participants looked at data through three different theoretical frameworks. By the end of the session, participants recognized the importance of theoretical frameworks and how they influence the analysis of data.

Workshop Presentation

Publishing Educational Research in the area of STEM

Leader: Julie Luft, UGA Mathematics and Science Education
April 26, 2017
In this session, participants looked at different educational research articles, and explored the sections that typically comprise educational research articles. Various tips and resources pertaining to publishing were provided during the session.

Workshop Presentation

Spring 2016

Is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Happening in My Classroom?

April 28, 2016

Have you ever had a question about your students’ learning you couldn’t quite figure out? Did you plan an activity for your classroom that didn’t match up with your expectations? These are the types of questions SoTL scholars explore in their research. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) allows instructors in higher education to examine student learning and their own teaching practices in the classroom by contributing these experiences to the research literature. Supported by CIRTL (Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning) and the SEER (Scientists Engaged in Education Research) Center, this workshop will provide a clearer picture of what it means to be a SoTL scholar and how to achieve the three levels of CIRTL participation as a SoTL scholar: Associate, Practioner, and Scholar.

Workshop Presentation
CIRTL Learning Outcomes