Innovation in Undergraduate Teaching of Life Sciences – Webinar series with Erin Dolan

We would like to announce a webinar series on “Innovation in Undergraduate Teaching of Life Sciences”.

This webinar series replaces and complements the “1st Swiss Symposium on Innovation in Undergraduate Teaching of Life Sciences” (cancelled for now because of the pandemic).

With monthly online seminars in English (usually on Wednesday at 17.30 CET), it aims to create a forum and a community to help improving the quality of undergraduate education in the life sciences.

Its target audience includes program directors and coordinators, teachers, student counsellors, discipline-specific educational scientists and others. Although it grew out of the 1st Swiss Symposium idea, there is not much Swissness to it, and it is therefore definitely also open to any interested persons from anywhere else.

Topics might include: Shifting the emphasis from teaching to learning – Active learning – Flipped classroom – Addressing student misconceptions – Promoting conceptual understanding – Integration of basic sciences – Computational biology skills – Technological innovation – Integrating MOOCs – Practicals with large classes – Authentic assessment – Discipline-specific societal issues – Assessing impact on learning rather than student satisfaction – Preparing for non-academic careers – English as teaching language – Faculty development – Teaching assistants – Switzerland-specific institutional issues …

Program

The detailed program is listed here for the next few months, to be continued after the summer break (stay tuned for updates and extensions).

• March 17 (exceptionally at 17.00): Erin Dolan (University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA);
Undergraduate research at scale: What if the treatment is a CURE?

• April 14 (17.30): Kostas Kampourakis (University of Geneva, CH);
Going beyond content knowledge: Addressing students’ preconceptions to achieve conceptual understanding in undergraduate biology

• May 12 (17.30): Katja Köhler and Ernst Hafen (ETH Zürich, CH);
Teaching as teamwork – The Center for Active Learning at the ETH Department of Biology

• June 9 (17.30): Pierre Cosson (University of Geneva, CH);
Construction of a new bachelor curriculum with integration of multiple soft skills

Organizers

Didier Picard (University of Geneva) and François Lombard (University of Geneva), under the auspices of Life Sciences Switzerland.
 

Registration

Registration is free, for LS2 members and non-members, and for the whole Seminar Series. Only registered participants will receive the zoom link of the webinar.

Sign me up now