Michael Crawford1

Florida Doci2

David Johnston1

Biological Sciences

1University of Windsor2University of Ottawa

mcrawfo@uwindsor.ca

Biology Courses – Upper Year

• Larger classes, fewer faculty

• Greater internationalization

• UG

• Teaching Assistants (Graduate Students)

• Less prepared = lower literacy

• Domestic

• International

• Less writing / more multiple choice examination

• Less writing ~

• Less “big picture” critical thinking

• Less complex reasoning

• Underdeveloped rhetorical skills

Peer Review

How many use peer-review in class?

Did it work?

Was it satisfying from the perspective of

the reviewer, the reviewed, and teacher

perspectives?

Would you use it more , less, again etc.?

Group Assignments

Perils/ benefits of group assignments?

Challenges:

• Writing and reviewing competence (Topping, 1998)

• Value of reviews to writer

• Value pedagogically (to reviewer and writer)

• Peer anxiety (Rogers and Feller, 2016)

• Perceived value (Mulder et al., 2014)

• Sharing of responsibility / duties / grades

• Degree of commitment

Collaborative or Team-Based Learning

Academic literacy – Bakhtinian approach (Lillis, 2003)

Monologic Dialogic

Reproduction of Challenging, playful

official discourse Opening to examination

Resolution Open-ended?

Collaboration most effective when :

• Formal team interactions are short

• Group presentations are minimized

• Students are interdependent

(Tomcho and Foels, 2012)

We Inherit Traits and transmit

them

Nature

• Genetics

Nurture

• Environment

• Social memes

We now know that the two talk

Genomic Imprinting =

Epigenetics

First Semester

Assembled References

Parsed them into likely chapter sections

Assignments related to:

• Assembling additional refs

• Annotated bibliography

• Seminar/respondent

• Rough draft

• Peer review

• Network to decide what parts fit together best

• Work in chapter-specific groups and horse-trade

• Final chapter with figures and tables

Second Semester

1. Abstract of chapter

• Coherent structure?

• Identify problems

• Propose possible solutions

2. Presentation – summary and critique

3. Chapter outline with explicit solutions

4. Formal proposal and fact-checking

5. Swap meet/editorial meetings

6. Formatting to style, new artwork, re-submit with letter

7. Identification of reviewers

8. Identification of recipients and communication strategy

9. Proposal of table of contents (chapter names), bookends

Pedagogical potency, relevance, and marketable skills

Published November 2015

University of Windsor, Emerging Scholars’ Press

ISBN 9780920233726

Free:

• Kindle

• ePub

• PDF

• Screen show

For Cost:

Amazon Publish on Demand

Windsor Downloads ~ 350

Does not include:

Google Books, Academic repositories

Free book sources

Referenced during medical and professional school

interviews

Peer reviewed chapter for author CVs

Institutional repute

Newspaper stories

Referee enthusiasm

Adjudication Panel visibility

• scholarship award panels

• professional school application reviewers

Supported by:

Centred on Learning Innovation Fund (CLIF)

Faculty of Science

Department of Biology

Interfaculty Program of Arts and Science

Office of Provost, University of Windsor

Leddy Library

AMAZING Students!