PURSUITS: Week of October 23, 2017

Dr. Justin Pruneski (Biology) had an original piece of science education curriculum published in the online Case Collection at the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science (NCCSTS). The Case Study titled A cure for cancer? was developed to teach students in BIO110 about the basics of cancer and its treatments, by placing it into the context of a story about a student struggling with a family member’s diagnosis and a conspiracy theory proposing a suppressed cure for cancer.  The Case Study was published here along with accompanying Teaching Notes, Answer Key, and video resources so other instructors can implement it in their courses. 

This work was initiated at a Summer Workshop of the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium as part of Justin’s New Case Fellowship through the Science Case Network. It was further developed as part of a National Science Foundation-funded project to build case studies and associated videos for use in a flipped classroom approach to teaching General Biology. As part of this grant, Justin attended a workshop last summer which allowed him to make a video to introduce his case study (viewable here) and modify the case to fit a flipped classroom model.

Dr. Ginny Gregg and Dr. Traci Stark (Psychology and Criminology) traveled to San Antonio, Texas, last week to present a poster at the annual conference of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology. The poster was titled The Assessment of High Impact Practices in a Psychology Curriculum. The poster included data that Dr. Gregg collected during her Spring 2017 sabbatical, and included results of a focus group in Dr. Stark's senior capstone course.