Teaching with Avida-ED: instructor experiences following an in-person professional development program aimed at increasing active learning and experimentation in evolution education

被引：0
作者：
Brian Samuel Geyer [1 ]
James J. Smith [2 ]
Robert T. Pennock [1 ]
机构：
[1] BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 48824, MI
[2] Department of Anthropology, Michigan State University, 655 Auditorium Dr, Baker Hall Room 355, East Lansing, 48824, MI
[3] Lyman Briggs College, Michigan State University, 919 E. Shaw Lane, Room E-35, East Lansing, 48825, MI
来源：
Evolution: Education and Outreach | / 17卷 / 1期
基金：
美国国家科学基金会;
关键词：
Avida-ED; Evolution; Science education; STEM professional development; Training-of-Trainers;
D O I：
10.1186/s12052-024-00211-2
中图分类号：
学科分类号：
摘要：
Avida-ED is a model system that lets students explore evolution and the nature of science by observing and manipulating the evolutionary dynamics of digital organisms. Over 5 years, we ran eight 2.5-day in-person professional development workshops for 105 primarily college biology instructors to introduce them to Avida-ED and digital evolution and to help them to plan implementations. In this paper, based upon 60-min interviews with 46 of the attendees, we describe what they found to be of value in the workshop itself and the implementations of Avida-ED that they subsequently carried out. The Active LENS workshops were universally valued by the interviewees as a professional development experience; they valued the overall experience of the workshops, their organization and content, and the instructor support materials. Of the 46 teachers that we interviewed, 41 implemented Avida-ED in their classrooms, in 66 separate implementations. We characterized these with respect to the nature of the implementation and its duration, and examined the data in relation to course type, course level, and stated learning goals of the instructors. The most common use was to have students learn evolutionary concepts by observing them in action. A smaller fraction used it to provide a complete research experience. © The Author(s) 2024.
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