I am incredibly excited that the all-new CLSE Resource Portal for Scientific Teaching is finally up and running! Our goal for this portal is to assist all CLSE community members in the pursuit of excellence in teaching, with an intentional focus on the concept of "scientific teaching." Check out the homepage news feed article, "Scientific Teaching on CWIS" if you would like a brief introduction to how scientific teaching works and how the resources on this portal can support that instructional approach. 

The portal is already filled with loads of resources for teaching, and can be a great help as you develop lectures, design assessments, create recitation activities, or make changes to prior course materials.

Speaking of prior course materials, be sure to register as a user with the portal, so that you can upload lessons and activities of your own that you think might be beneficial for others involved in undergraduate biology instruction.

While the resource portal itself has been around for quite some time, we are confident that the newest changes and additions to the site will make for a much improved user experience, and hope that the resource portal becomes one of the

In reflecting back on the last edition of the Resource of the Week Blog, and in an ongoing attempt to improve on the quality of the posts that I provide, I have concluded that I need to consciously and deliberately practice formulating my thoughts in a manner that is interesting and informative, yet slightly more clear and concise. As I say that, let it be known I make no claims of expertise in the ?art? of blogging. I find it to be both a challenging and an interesting endeavor, and I believe that the exercise in reflection and analysis that is required each time I complete one of these write-ups is, on a personal level, of significant benefit. Hopefully someone(s) ?out there? might also benefit from the thoughts I?m attempting to articulate and convey.

Recently, I?ve been reading up a bit on various measures that can be assessed associated with student gains outside the typical cognitive ?learning gains? that result following the implementation of a new instructional strategy or approach to teaching. One measureable construct of particular interest to me is that of metacognition. Without breaking out a specific literature reference, I?ll simply define metacognition as

Well, as it's been a few weeks (or a few months...but who's counting) since the last Resource of the Week Blog went live, I figured it was just about time to dust off the old database and get to work. Turns out, actually, that our CWIS resource portal has been battling a bit of a "bug" since February, resulting in a few "access" problems for any users (including myself) who were registered prior to the software update that happened sometime that month (and by "access" I mean things like the inability to access/view blogs). Regardless, I figure that as long as I can still post and as long as someone might have the ability to read and/or benefit, I'll do my best to provide some ideas and information about how best to utilize resources found here on the portal.

My choice in selecting a resource to blog about this week was heavily influenced by my recent experience at the mobile summer institute (MoSI) that was held here at OSU last month. During this app. 4-day conference, attendees learn about scientific teaching and the backward design approach to lesson development, and apply these principles to create an approximately 25-minute in-class activity called a ?teachable tidbit

This week, instead of deciding on any one specific resource, I'd like to focus in on an entire group of resources that can be found on CWIS called "teachable tidbits." If you aren't familiar with the concept of the "teachable tidbit," consider spending a few minutes reading chapter 5 of Scientific Teaching by, among others, Jo Handelsman. That chapter is dedicated to the specifics of designing a "teachable unit," however it is noted that the identical approach can be utilized in the development of a single lesson or in-class activity of approximately 20 to 25 minutes. This version of the "teachable unit" is considered a "teachable tidbit." 

I focus on this group of resources not only because they have been developed by our own instructors and TAs, but also because they provide excellent representations of learning-goals-and-outcomes-oriented resources that follow a backward design approach to lesson and activity design. In the development of a teachable tidbit, participants working in groups - facilitated by an individual with extensive experience in this pedagogy - identify a biological topic for consideration, define an overarching learning goal (i.e. what do we want the

This week, I was curious about what resources had been uploaded to CWIS that might help instructors to meet the GEC learning outcome regarding the link between science and technology, specifically how to, "...describe the inter-dependence of scientific and technological developments.” Upon browsing the resources in the database using that outcome to narrow the search, I found an intriguing resource entitled, "How to Sequence a Genome." The synopsis described the resource as a collection of 13 videos all involving the human genome project and the methods behind the sequencing required for this project.

As I watched the video sequence, I appreciated that captions were provided, as I could pause the video and read the transcript if I needed any additional time to digest the content. I also appreciated the option to read the video transcripts in full without the video. The animations were clean and informative, and the process of genome sequencing was described in a way that should be easily understood. I did not like that there was no “rewind” function, and each video had to be fully reloaded in order to view the content a second time. That said, I felt that this was a very informative sequence of video that, if I were teaching an intro course in biology, my students could watch outside of class in preparation for in-class active learning.

As an aside, I would also recommend this resource to instructors seeking items to address the 1113 learning outcome that students will, "Apply biological concepts in the assessment of contemporary issues," as a number of contemporary issues are directly addressed within this resource (Human Genome Project, human disease, etc.).

 Be sure to look for the CWIS resource “Example supplemental questions for the Genome.gov Online Education Kit: How to Sequence a Genome” for some ideas to generate critical thinking and discussion among your students after watching these videos.