BioSkills Guide: Development and National Validation of a Tool for Interpreting the Vision and Change Core Competencies | Semantic Scholar (2024)

This work examines the alignment of teaching, assessment, and student experience in undergraduate biology courses with the Vision and Change core competency recommendations and applies the intended–enacted–experienced curriculum model to obtain a more complete, multiperspective view of the curriculum.

This study reveals that many programs may not be using PLOs to communicate learning goals with students, and identifies key themes across these PLOs and differences in skills listed between institution types.

The proposed streamline transfer issues using a shared set of course-level learning outcomes (CLOs) developed collaboratively by faculty across multiple institutions and an increased familiarity with and use of Vision and Change in curriculum development over time is found.

Comparing Vertebrate Anatomy needs to acknowledge racism, androcentrism, hom*ophobia, genocide, slavery, and other influences in its history and address their lingering effects in order to move forward as a thriving discipline that is inclusive of all students and scientists and continues to generate unbiased knowledge for the betterment of humanity.

This study reveals that many programs may not be using PLOs to communicate learning goals with students, and identifies key themes across these PLOs and differences in skills listed between institution types.

Recommendations are provided for how educators can help their undergraduate science students develop valuable, prescribed SciComm skills, including helping students determine the right audience for their communication project, providing opportunities for students to try multiple media types, determining the type of language that is appropriate for the audience, and encouraging students to aim for a mix of communication objectives.

The Student Attitudes Toward Communication Skills Survey (SATCSS) was developed to measure how undergraduate students value learning communication skills based on Expectancy‐Value Theory across three modes of communication.

It is demonstrated that at-home, hands-on laboratories are a viable approach for teaching practical skills to students in fully online courses and encouraged science instructors to introduce at- home laboratories into their online courses.

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A collection of resources developed by several different groups that can be used to respond to the Vision and Change report’s call to transform undergraduate education at both the individual course and departmental levels are described.

This work leveraged the existing literature and a proposed working definition of interdisciplinary science derived from both the perspectives of science faculty members and scientific organizations to build a conceptual model for an Interdisciplinary Science Framework to be used as a guide for developing and assessing interdisciplinary efforts in undergraduate science education.

A culminating conference resulted in consensus on both the form and substance of modern biology courses: They should emphasize repeatedly five core concepts and six core competencies in a student-centered, inquiry-driven pedagogy modeled on a number of “best practices.”

A step-by-step practical guide to help instructors assess their CUREs using best practices in assessment and recommends that instructors first identify their anticipated CURE learning outcomes, then work to identify an assessment instrument that aligns to those learning outcomes and critically evaluate the results from their course assessment.

Comparison of student performance in various biology classes indicated that some scientific skills are more challenging for students to develop than others and identified a number of previously unappreciated gaps in the curriculum.

It is proposed that biology instructors can use the TOSLS to evaluate their students’ proficiencies in using scientific literacy skills and to document the impacts of curricular reform onStudents’ scientific literacy.

The primary goal of the Enhancing Learning by Improving Process Skills in STEM (ELIPSS) Project is the creation and assessment of resources that can be readily adopted by instructors to assess student process skills in a wide range of classrooms across STEM disciplines.

This essay addresses what learning progressions are and how they leverage research from the cognitive and learning sciences to inform instructional practices, and uses a published learning progression about carbon cycling to illustrate how learning progression describe the maturation of student thinking about a key topic.

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