BioQUEST Summer Workshop 2011

For 25 years, the BioQUEST community of faculty developers, presenters, and authors have contributed to curricular reform in undergraduate biology education at a wide variety of institutions, educational conferences, and professional societies. Working group projects started at BQ summer workshops have led to grant proposals, funded projects, publications, and research that are ongoing years later.

BioQUEST workshops are an intensive, immersive experience in which participants collaboratively explore cutting edge curricular approaches to teaching and learning. This workshop will begin with sessions on bioinformatics, data visualization and cyberlearning.  Participants will then have an opportunity to work in small groups to develop ideas about using these tools and approaches in the classroom.  Each group will present their ideas in the form of a white paper outline which can be used as a guide to developing curricular materials.  Groups will be expected to complete their white papers by Fall 2011.  Whitepapers may be submitted to professional journals, posted on faculty websites, and disseminated through the BioQUEST website.

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Join us this year as we reflect on the transformative nature of undergraduate teaching and learning in biology in an increasingly networked society with extended access to data, tools, and resources. We propose the development of white papers with curricular examples to serve as open resources for future planning, proposal writing, manuscripts, and curricular development.  Topics under consideration include:

  • Regional centers as an organizational model for the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium
    We have always emphasized the distributed nature of BioQUEST and how it functions as a consortium of collaborating partners. What are the opportunities and challenges involved in more explicitly shifting to a “regional centers” model? How would you identify regional centers and describe their roles in the organization?
  • Professional development that focuses on diverse audiences
    BioQUEST has prided itself on its ability to bring together diverse communities to address significant educational challenges. How might we better serve audiences like graduate students, 2-year college faculty, faculty from minority serving institutions, under-represented faculty, non-biologists?
  • Pedagogical vision beyond 3Ps
    Problem Posing, Problem Solving, and Peer Persuasion have acted both as a summary statement about our core pedagogical commitments and as a easily recognized calling card. Is it time to replace or extend our introductory pedagogical language?
  • Open science education
    The idea of open science education touches on a wide range of important values, strategies and resources. How can we organize and communicate this new context within which biology faculty and learners operate?
  • Quantitative biology
    Despite recent attention there are still a plethora of underutilized resources and strategies for engaging students in quantitative aspects of biology. What are our strengths and how can we communicate our vision for the possible.