Skill Coverage in Biology Courses

After a year and a half of meetings and data analysis we are ready to share our results on where and how skills are covered in Biology courses at UBC. The report is posted in the secure area of the website, as well as the slides from the seminar we gave giving an update on the project and going over some of the main findings from the report. If you need access to the site, please get in touch with a member of the project team.

Link to report, seminar slides and seminar recording (here)

Faculty Focus Groups

Over the past few months we have been holding focus groups from different sub-disciplines of biology. Across 5 meetings, nearly 60 teaching and research faculty discussed the biology content covered in the curriculum, voiced their concerns, and offered suggestions for next steps, and recommendations for improvement.

We have collected the major findings of the focus groups in a report which can be accessed on the Faculty Page (you can request the password from any member of the project team). The report highlights several specific places where we need help from faculty to move forward. If you would like to get involved, please contact the Project Lead, Trish Schulte.

The report contains details on 4 key areas

1. Integration Across the Curriculum:
   The project team should help facilitate coordination of content and resource sharing across courses in the curriculum in a sustainable way.
2. Lower-Division Courses:
   The project should work to improve coverage in lower-division courses on (1) the interplay of genotype, phenotype and the environment, and (2) diversity beyond terrestrial vertebrates.
3. Upper-Division Courses:
   The project should support efforts to reorganize, restructure and redevelop courses covering (1) plant physiology/development, and (2) animal endocrinology and reproduction.
4. Further Investigation:
   The project team should collect more information on (1) specific content topics that people were interested in, and (2) the high school biology curriculum.

Alumni perspectives of UBC Biology

In January we sent a survey out to alumni from the UBC Biology Program, to get their perspective on the program. We have now analyzed the survey results and are ready to share them with you!

Here’s just a taste of what we found!

• What our alumni do after graduating: 76% sought additional education, 44% work in healthcare
• What alumni valued about the program: the people and the program flexibility
• What they think could be improved: career preparation, advising, and community building
• The skills alumni think are important: communication and teamwork

You can find all this and lots more in the full report below!

2020-ubc-biology-alumni-reportDownload

Project Update: Feb 2020

Here is what we’ve been working on since our last update!

• Interviews with course instructors about skills covered in their courses (Jul 2019 – ongoing)
  Have collected data for 50% of BIOL courses on how they teach students various skills.
  
• Student focus groups to inform development of a survey (Fall 2019)
  Conducted 6 focus groups with students to facilitate the creation of a comprehensive survey about student motivations and skills training.
  
• Survey of current student knowledge of biology content (Oct 2019 – ongoing)
  Used the GenBioMAPs instrument to test student knowledge of key biology content in a 1st year and 3rd year course. We will soon be sending the survey out to 4th year students.
  
• Survey of Biology Program alumni about the program (Jan 2020)
  We developed and deployed a survey to Biology Program alumni about their experiences in the program and the skills they value.
  
• Sharing results at a Botany Department seminar (Jan 28, 2020)
  We shared preliminary results from our various focus groups, surveys and interviews. The slides are included in our password protected faculty page.
  
• Facilitated a workshop at a Zoology Faculty Retreat (Feb 20, 2020)
  Jaclyn Dee facilitated a discussion with Zoology faculty about the important content/concepts to include in the Biology curriculum, then moved on to a discussion of key technical skills and how to approach the coverage of these more ‘hand-on’ skills in the Biology Program.

And what we’re planning to work on next

• Finish interviews with course instructors about skills training
  We’re planning to finish the instructor interviews by the summer, then we can start analyzing the data in earnest!
  
• Faculty working groups to define key content and its coverage in the curriculum
  Soon we will begin organizing working groups for each Biology discipline to generate a list of key Biology content in their area. We will use this information to put together a form to collect data about content covered in different courses.
  
• Survey of current students about their goals the curriculum
  The student focus groups we completed last year are being used to guide the generation of a student survey to get more input from students about what they want to see in the Biology Program. We plan to disseminate the survey this term.

Project Introduced at Joint Botany/Zoology Faculty Meeting

On Sep 12, 2019 our project lead Trish Schulte gave a brief presentation at the joint faculty meeting between the Botany and Zoology departments. She started by briefly outlined the scope of the project and the progress so far.

A preliminary analysis of faculty responses to the skills survey indicates a strong consensus that the skills from the survey are important for graduating biology students (see the preliminary data in the Faculty page; contact Miranda Meents for the access password). A brief summary of the alumni outcomes data shown at the 2019 Biology Teaching Retreat was also presented (the slides from the retreat are also available on the Faculty page ).

Importantly, Trish also highlighted how we need faculty to help us with the project going forward. Trish and Miranda Meents (the project’s Teaching and Learning Fellow) will soon be getting in touch with faculty to get their input on disciplinary-specific curriculum skills/content (led by Trish), and the skills addressed in the courses each faculty member personally teaches (led by Miranda).

If you have any comments, questions or concerns about the project, we encourage you to contact a member of the project team. We are actively seeking input from faculty, students, staff, instructors, TAs, employers, and other interested parties.

Sharing Alumni Outcomes Results with Biology Students at Imagine Day

As part of the Biology Skills mapping project, we wanted to know what kinds of skills alumni of the program might require. By pulling from pre-existing survey data collected by the Government of British Columbia (Baccalaureate Surveys), as well as a review of alumni profiles on LinkedIn, we found some interesting results.

• Nearly 50% of alumni do not work in a biology-related field.
• Nearly 30% of alumni work in healthcare is some capacity.
• Nearly 75% of alumni seek additional training after completing their Biology degree

To take a closer look at the data (for example, what kinds of training and careers do alumni pursue; what skills do they rate as most important) check out the slides below from our presentation at the 2019 Biology Program Imagine Day event.

imagine-day-alumni-outcomesDownload

Biology Teaching Retreat 2019

At this year’s 2019 Biology Teaching Retreat Trish Schulte (Faculty Lead) and Miranda Meents (Biology Teaching and Learning Fellow) ran a session for the Biology Skills Project.

1. Overview of the project, progress to date, and upcoming work
2. Summary of an analysis of Biology Alumni outcomes from LinkedIn and the BC Baccalaureate Survey.
3. Workshop to define “Technical Skills”, brainstorm technical skills in biology, and discuss the place of technical skills in the UBC Undergraduate Biology Program.

The workshop provided an extremely important first step for the project team as we start to tackle the “Technical Skills Learning Objectives” for the Biology curriculum. We have now generated a first draft of technical skills, and plan to consult with faculty to refine the skills and their organization, and to flesh out disciplinary-specific categories.

You can find the slides from the presentation in the “Faculty” section of the website (you can contact a member of the project team for the password).

Summary of Biology Skills Project Activities

Members of the project team have already organized a number of events that have contributed to the Biology Skills Project.

1. Seminar by Sara Brownell (Feb 5, 2019) – Primary author of the BioCore guide – a set of core concepts for biology majors.
2. Seminar and Workshop by Alexa Clemmons (Oct 30, 2018) – Primary author of BioSkills guide – a set of core competencies for biology majors. The workshop following the seminar focused on reaching faculty consensus on program-level competencies.
3. Biology Teaching Retreat (Aug 13, 2018) – Workshop soliciting faculty input about Biology skills.