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Providing chemistry graduate students with opportunities to learn about evidence-based teaching and to practice teaching skills in a mentored environment is crucial to their professional development. Herein is described the model for a graduate-level teaching practicum course specifically focused on the chemistry discipline. This course addressed current issues and trends in chemistry education, familiarized students with chemistry lecture and laboratory resources, and allowed students to practice their teaching skills in a mentored environment. Course assignments and projects were structured for inclusion in each student�s teaching portfolio. A Likert-type attitudinal survey was used to assess the course. The graduate students who completed the survey (N = 8) ranked highest in terms of average perceived usefulness the more tangible and experiential course components: (i) preparation and presentation of review session; (ii) preparation of student final lecture project; and (iii) preparation of teaching philosophy statement. This course was also perceived as useful to the average graduate student�s long-term career goal of attaining a postsecondary teaching position because it enhanced their teaching portfolios and concomitantly improved marketability for the academic job market. This course can be modified and adapted to fit the teaching professional development needs of graduate students at other institutions.

Collaborative testing has been shown to improve performance but not always content retention. In this study, we investigated whether collaborative testing could improve both performance and content retention in a large, introductory biology course. Students were semirandomly divided into two groups based on their performances on exam 1. Each group contained equal numbers of students scoring in each grade category (“A”–“F”) on exam 1. All students completed each of the four exams of the semester as individuals. For exam 2, one group took the exam a second time in small groups immediately following the individually administered test. The other group followed this same format for exam 3. Individual and group exam scores were compared to determine differences in performance. All but exam 1 contained a subset of cumulative questions from the previous exam. Performances on the cumulative questions for exams 3 and 4 were compared for the two groups to determine whether there were significant differences in content retention. Even though group test scores were significantly higher than individual test scores, students who participated in collaborative testing performed no differently on cumulative questions than students who took the previous exam as individuals.

The United States is ranked very low in acceptance of evolution among the public as compared to other countries, even though based on content standards, students should be exposed to evolutionary theory by the time they graduate from secondary school. Many studies have focused on how evolutionary theory is taught at the secondary level and the perspectives of the teachers. However, much less is known about these same issues in higher education. This study used a survey to collect responses from post-secondary instructors in the United States about how evolution is taught and how the individuals teaching the evolution courses perceive the theory and its role in shaping life on earth. Unlike secondary schools, there was much more consistency between the evolution curricula and attitudes of the instructors toward evolutionary theory at these post-secondary institutions. All types of institutions offer evolution-based courses or courses with evolution as a major topic of discussion at the introductory level, and most 4-year institutions also offer upper level evolution courses. Courses of all institution types address the same core elements of evolution. The vast majority of instructors accept the theory of evolution by natural selection as a biological explanation of the diversity of life on earth, although a small number still hold sympathetic views towards the teaching of Creationism and Intelligent Design. Despite having such consistency among post-secondary instructors, college graduates as well as the public, remain diverse in their acceptance and understanding of evolutionary principles. Engaging student misconceptions and providing evidence for evolution can have an impact on many students, but there is still a sizable portion of the population that remains resistant. With the limited success that current evolution pedagogy is having on post-secondary students, it is important to focus research on improving teaching and advocacy in order to increase the impact that college instruction has on students’ acceptance of evolution.

Biology education research (BER) can be a major contributor to the herculean task of modernizing and transforming biology education. However, as researchers in a relatively young and still small field, BER practitioners now find themselves fragmented across 64 biology-related societies and lacking agreement on a core research agenda, a convenient professional network, and venues of dissemination. To begin addressing these needs, the newly formed Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research (SABER) held an inaugural meeting in September 2010 at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. The 29 participants (Figure 1) included faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students engaged in empirical research and professional development, as well as journal editors, textbook writers, and a textbook editor. The diversity of this group contributed to a thoughtful, reflective, and productive meeting, whose major goals were to 1) define BER, 2) identify challenges to its practice, 3) formulate overarching research questions, and 4) outline the role of SABER in supporting the BER community. The consensus views of the participants on each of these goals are described in the paragraphs below. Figure 1: SABER Founding Members: Teri Balser, Clarissa Dirks, Mary Pat Wenderoth, Janet Branchaw, Rob Brooker, Peggy Brickman, Malcolm Campbell, Mark Connelly, Erin Dolan, Scott Freeman, Mark Hens, Jenny Knight, Kathryn Miller, Jennifer Momsen, Lisa Montplaisir, ... The outcomes of this meeting are timely in the context of the recently released summary report Vision and Change in Undergraduate Education, A Call to Action, which charged the biology community with “creating, using, assessing, and disseminating effective practices in teaching and learning” (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2010 ). By providing the infrastructure needed to create a vibrant network of practitioners, SABER is well positioned to support biology education researchers in generating empirical evidence that can effect meaningful changes in undergraduate biology education.

This paper introduces a College Science Learning Cycle adapted from the popular Biological Sciences Curriculum Study 5E to help science, technology, engineering, and mathematics faculty develop course materials to support active, student-centered teaching approaches in their classrooms., Finding the time for developing or locating new class materials is one of the biggest barriers for instructors reforming their teaching approaches. Even instructors who have taken part in training workshops may feel overwhelmed by the task of transforming passive lecture content to engaging learning activities. Learning cycles have been instrumental in helping K–12 science teachers design effective instruction for decades. This paper introduces the College Science Learning Cycle adapted from the popular Biological Sciences Curriculum Study 5E to help science, technology, engineering, and mathematics faculty develop course materials to support active, student-centered teaching approaches in their classrooms. The learning cycle is embedded in backward design, a learning outcomes–oriented instructional design approach, and is accompanied by resources and examples to help faculty transform their teaching in a time-efficient manner.