Diane Ebert-May
Professor
Plant Ecology
Department of Plant Biology
Michigan State University
270 Plant Biology Laboratory
East Lansing, MI 48824
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone:
517.432.7171
FAX:
517.353.1926
http://plantbiology.msu.edu/faculty/faculty-research/diane-ebert-may/
What are, to you, the key issues in creating learning resources that support your teaching style and your student's learning styles?
Understanding how students learning and how to assess that learning.
What is your vision for the "textbook" of the future and what impediments do you see to realizing that vision? Regardless of what "textbook" means, the limiting factor is conducting valid, reliable assessments that show the effect of any materials on student learning.
Describe briefly any research you have undertaken on teaching or learning. I conduct research on faculty change and model-based reasoning in science. We are creating a database for assessment data in biology (the Genbank of biology learning).
Have you created publicly accessible learning resources? Beginning in August 2004, we created a series entitled Pathways to Scientific Teaching for the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (a monthly journal of the Ecological Society of America). Each of these articles uses one of research papers in that issue of the journal as the basis for an inquiry-based instructional design and assessment of the associated learning goals. All of the Pathways to Scientific Teaching articles and the reference to the research paper are in Resources. The FIRST website
How would you like to contribute to the workshop? Assessment of student learning that becomes the basis for research on student learning. The creation of a database to facilitate and motivate research is necessary, just as it is in science.
What would you like to take away from the workshop? Connections with colleagues.
