Reflection from Jenny McFarland, regarding MAC curriculum – for Biology 201.

Time Commitment:

The time at the summer institutes was incredibly valuable.   It allowed me to work on materials that I would otherwise not have gotten around to working on.  It is very useful (and probably necessary for some of us) to have two or more days away from the distractions of home and campus, with a group of interested and engaged colleagues to do this type of work.  Otherwise the time required to write these exercises would probably have been prohibitive, as I usually use any time available to work on the biology “content”.

Assessment:

Students need to know up front if this material is going to be on the exam and in what form.  They need and appreciate the opportunity to practice skills on which they will be assessed.  Quantitative skills are assessed in several ways in Biology 201, including (but not limited to) the following:

      Graphing is assessed by     

v     student self-assessment of graphs in lab reports

v     instructor (graded) assessment of graphs in lab reports

v     graphing skill in making graphs on quizzes &/or exams

v     interpretation of graphs on exams and as CATs in lectures and discussions

      Units, Scientific Notation, and Conversions are assessed by

v     instructor assessment on lab reports

v     simple conversion problems on quizzes &/or exams

v     informal assessment and feedback in lab, as students are performing measurements

Drawbacks and Challenges:

Nothing is ever really done.  The assignments, activities, worksheets, and other materials need revision as I find out what works and what doesn’t, what takes too much time, and the like.