This newsletter is for BIOME 2023 participants and some materials may be password protected.
Greetings from the BioQUEST Team!
We are trying something new this year — a monthly newsletter just for BIOME Institute fellows, so we can keep up with each other more easily, and help you better navigate QUBESHub.
In this Issue:
P.S. If you’re coming across this newsletter on the QUBES website or on social media, you can subscribe here to keep in touch!
As a reminder, the fall working groups provide an opportunity to engage with like-minded colleagues and work through the challenges of implementing new ideas in the classroom based on participants’ interests. Working groups will meet every other week from September 4 through November 17. Read below for summaries of each working group!
Brief summary of what your working group will do: Work with existing and new BioTA podcasts and determine the best ways to use podcasts with different structural features and associated in-class resources.
What's your mission? This group will explore application of different podcasts from the BioTA series to explore best practices for application of these digital resources in the classroom.
What deliverable do you think you'll work towards? Developing and potentially field testing in-class resources linked to specific BioTA episodes.
Expertise or resources you're looking for: Interest in exploring applications of digital resources in synchronous and asynchronous learning environments whether they are in-person or online.
This group will be meeting on Wednesdays at 2:30pm CT. Reach out to Phil Gibson to learn more!
Brief summary of what your working group will do: This working group aims to help students and faculty develop both collaboration and leadership skills by combining the Project Leadership Program and the Project Leadership web-based app. The app provides guidance in skill development by allowing students to focus on a specific skill within a team role. When using the app, students provide feedback to one another so that both students can observe development of these skills. We are excited to explore the potential for Project Leadership to help with group work in the classroom, and how it might contribute to assessing how our students work in teams.
Goals and Deliverables: We will be working to develop different ways of using Project Leadership within our courses and faculty development programs by either implementing it in the fall semester or designing ways to use it in future courses. As deliverables, we’ll share lessons learned and our plans to incorporate Project Leadership in future contexts. Some of us are also interested in applying for an RCN incubator program and we’ll discuss what type of questions we would be asking as a network.
Reach out to Laurel Lorenz for more information!
Brief summary of what your working group will do: Finishing our original set of 5 modules that can be used alone or as a CURE module based on collaborator Siobhan Leachman's revealing hidden figures workflow. We have finished the Introduction to Hidden Figures and ORCID modules and can support anyone who would like to implement or adapt it. We will also be working on modules on Data Sleuthing Skills and the Power of Storytelling this fall so come join us! We are also happy for new ideas and connections.
This group is splitting into three subgroups:
1. Implementing existing modules in your class
2. Finishing the Bionomia and Wikidata modules
3. Creating the Story Telling Module
What's your mission? People are important, and data about people gets considerable attention across disciplines. In biological collections, the names of people that have collected and/or identified specimens are kept alongside other important information like taxonomic information and when and where the specimen was collected. The system of keeping track of who did what is a work in progress however because human names tend to be poor identifiers (not unique or stable). People, as the data creators and managers, also introduce their own biases into the systems they create leading to inequities in who is named, and therefore who receives credit and acclaim, for the collecting and describing of the natural world. New tools are being developed such as ORCID ID, Bionomia, and WikiData to help create and improve tracking and linking the human-side of biodiversity data. These tools are free and open, meaning anyone can help add and improve data about the humans involved in documenting biodiversity.
What deliverable do you think you'll work towards? Finishing the CURE (we have two modules finished and 2-3 to go!) and a manuscript.
Expertise or resources you're looking for: Anyone is welcome, but we are especially wanting help developing the module on the power of storytelling!
Reach out to Molly Phillips to learn more!
Our mission: Together, we will go through the ISTP MOOC and the guided facilitation for new participants
Our goal:
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More participants completing the MOOC
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Giving participants space to have deep conversations around these topics
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More participants working to +1 (add something new to) their classrooms
Expertise or resources you're looking for: Anyone interested in taking the ISTP MOOC with a group of likeminded peers
We are happy to answer questions and a little more information can be found on our group page (you will not need to apply!).
What's your mission? This group of biology instructors will explore the new artificial intelligence technologies and ponder the ramifications on pedagogical environments. We will foster ideas that can benefit instructors and students in learning and production. We will build community guidelines, codes of conduct, and other stores of wisdom to aid our colleagues for the upcoming shifts in education.
Brief summary of what your working group will do:
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7, one-hour meetings, every other week
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Sept 6 to Dec 6, probably on Wednesdays
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participants share facilitating meetings
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about 25 minutes of homework before meetings
What deliverable do you think you'll work towards? Stemming from literature, discussions, and in-class activities, we will build a combined survey article of lived experiences using artificial intelligence for classroom lessons and other academic endeavors along with providing shareable infographics to encourage conversations about responsible use of AI tools at other institutions.
Expertise or resources you're looking for: With the relatively new crop of AI tools released in the past year, we understand that few people feel like experts in this area. This group looks to build together with optimism and curiosity about how our workflows and the structures that we have for our students can be altered in amazing ways.
Deliverables: At the end of the Fall term, we can assemble
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examples of lesson plans that use AI tools
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examples of our own use of AI tools
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weekly exploration of AI tools in our group
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Suggestion: start thinking about a project for you own personal self that fits a chatGPT prompt like "Help me make a study plan for ..."
Reach out to Derek Sollberger with any questions!
Brief summary of what your working group will do: As a collaborative community, we will be working on projects associated with social justice, equity, diversity and inclusion in STEM undergraduate programs. The Resource project page will have forums for discussion, collections with resources associated with Social Justice in STEM undergraduate curricula, including publications, curriculum descriptions, and chapters for the proposed book.
What's your mission? The mission of this group is to collect and annotate existing materials for teaching social justice issues. We would plan to develop collections and an annotated BQ/QUBES publication that we can share with others.
Pat Marsteller is facilitating multiple working groups under the umbrella of the Blueprint Project:
Check out the project’s page, or reach out to the group’s facilitator Pat Marsteller with any questions!
QUBES Corner
As a reminder it is important to make sure you have email notifications on to get important BIOME updates. If you feel like you are missing out, check out these Knowledge Base articles about changing general notification settings and changing notification settings in a forum. Still having issues? Come visit us during office hours, or email info@bioquest.org!
Connect With Us
Have questions about BIOME or beyond? Join us for BioQUEST’s open office hours Wednesdays at 12:00 PM ET & Thursdays at 2:00 PM ET. Visit this page for Zoom and other info!
