Hijacking all the courses: a trans-disciplinary learning experience for undergraduate students

Shoshanah R. Jacobs, Jessica Nelson, Brianna Driscoll, Daniel Gillis University of Guelph We present Ideas Congress (ICON), a truly trans-disciplinary learning opportunity for undergraduate students at the University of Guelph. A review of interdisciplinary or trans-disciplinary research opportunities for undergraduate students in Canada revealed that programs were either 1) restricted to graduate programs or 2) not very trans-disciplinary. Using a consultative process with faculty and administration, we designed a pilot course that focuses on the teaching of knowledge translation and transfer theory and then challenges students to apply that knowledge to solving a community problem. ICON has three major goals: To facilitate transdisciplinary learning and research. To strengthen discipline specific knowledge by providing students with the appropriate platform and tools to act as teacher. To engage students in community supported research and challenge them to make their work relevant and accessible to all stake holders. In the first offering of the course, we had 25 students from 14 different majors and 4 Colleges. Thirteen different advisors from those 4 Colleges accepted these students into the respective courses, two professors from different Colleges taught the course, one professor and one PhD candidate from different Colleges conducted research on the outcomes of the course and three undergraduate students from two Colleges provided research assistance. ICON was made possible by accessing all single semester senior undergraduate independent study courses across campus, allowing students to make a choice: work one-on-one with a faculty advisor in the traditional way, or join ICON and gain experience in working in research with a trans-disciplinary team after having learned how. Here we demonstrate that a truly trans-disciplinary learning experience is possible within the traditional academic framework with only minor adjustments. We show that the creation of a new course code (therefore removing the possibility of getting credit towards respective majors) is not necessary and that this is likely to increase the demand for this experience

Reversing the process: Inventing as a means of effective learning

“Inventing” rather than the traditional “tell and practice” approach to teaching has been shown to promote deeper learning and increase retention time in students in addition to other benefits. Presented here are the results of a study on the effectiveness of the Reverse Journal Assignment; a learning tool designed to guide fourth year university students to ‘invent’ the rules of scientific writing and data analysis in two targeted article sections: Materials and Methods and Results; sections where student performance was identified as weak. The results show an improvement in the performance of students in these areas after having completed the Assignment, indications of higher level learning, and positive attitudes towards the value of the Assignment as a learning tool.

Large university classes: A 100+ year-old problem

We think that large university classes are a relatively recent problem, but the literature shows that it has existed for over 100 years. There is a growing body of research on class size and how it relates to student achievement however, the findings have been complex, difficult to interpret, and challenging to integrate. The primary complication is that the definition of a large class is fluid. It can vary with discipline, year level, format of class, and opinion. Because of the complexity, researchers often quantify it, somewhat arbitrarily, at greater than 100 students. One study defines a large class as one that necessitates a change of teaching methods, but also notes that pedagogical approach depends on the class size, creating a circular argument. Irrespective of the problem, we should be able to detect when a change of teaching method was implemented as a course grew. Today, course with enrollments close to 1000 students are common; courses that are often prerequisites for several programs of study. It is therefore becoming more critical to provide educators with valid, reliable, and instructive information on how to effectively teach a large class, and to enable administrators to evaluate and change their practices. In this session, we will discuss the results of a meta-analysis of large classes we performed to define the size of a large class, determine what has driven changes in class size other than costs, and to see if there is an optimal class size that balances competing administration and pedagogical needs

Parents are a drag: long-lived birds share the cost of increased foraging effort with their offspring, but males pass on more of the costs than females.

Life history theory predicts that parents will balance benefits from investment in current offspring against benefits from future reproductive investments. Long-lived organisms are therefore less likely to increase parental effort when environmental conditions deteriorate. To investigate the effect of decreased foraging capacity on parental behaviour of long-lived monogamous seabirds, we experimentally increased energy costs for chick-rearing thick-billed murres (Uria lomvia). Handicapped birds had lighter chicks and lower provisioning rates, supporting the prediction that long-lived animals would pass some of the costs of impaired foraging ability on to their offspring. Nonetheless, handicapped birds spent less time underwater, had longer inter-dive surface intervals, had lower body mass, showed lower resighting probabilities in subsequent years and consumed fewer risky prey items. Corticosterone levels were similar between control and handicapped birds. Apparently, adults shared some of the costs of impaired foraging, but those costs were not measurable in all metrics. Handicapped males had higher plasma neutral lipid concentrations (higher energy mobilisation) and their chicks exhibited lower growth rates than handicapped females, suggesting different sex-specific investment strategies. Unlike other studies of auks, partners did not compensate for handicapping, despite good foraging conditions for unhandicapped birds. In conclusion, parental murres and their offspring shared the costs of experimentally increased foraging constraints, with females investing more than males

"Where Are We Now and Where Are We Going?" The BioM Innovation Database

We present the BioM Innovation Database, the first of its kind containing detailed information about global biomimetic activity. We present a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the database to address the following questions: (1) Are products, which are identified as being the result of biologically inspired design (BID), actually BID and to what extent do they use biomimicry terminology in their descriptions by the designers

Un guide d’instruction métacognitif pour favoriser les stratégies d’études efficaces

Metacognition—the processes whereby learners assess and monitor their progress in learning (metacognitive monitoring, MM) and use these judgements of learning to make choices about what to study in the future (metacognitive control, MC)—has been shown to be beneficial to learning. However, effective learning also relies on metacognitive knowledge (MK)—that is, students’ knowledge about effective study strategies and how to employ them. Few students receive explicit in-class instruction on these topics. Here, we explore if an online instructional guide, which includes information about evidence-based study strategies, example questions for self-testing, and a study calendar to help regulate timing of studying can effectively teach MK to improve performance.While it is unclear if the online instructional guide was related to increases in MK, MM, and MC, we did observe benefits to student performance, particularly in highly anxious students on high-stake assessments such as the final examination. Future research should seek to understand how students were engaging with the guide and how the nature of the engagement impacted their study strategies.Il a été montré que la métacognition – les processus par lesquels les apprenants et les apprenantes évaluent et suivent leurs progrès en apprentissage (surveillance métacognitive) et utilisent ces jugements d’apprentissage pour faire des choix concernant ce qu’ils veulent étudier à l’avenir (contrôle métacognitif) – est bénéfique à l’apprentissage. Toutefois, l’apprentissage efficace s’appuie également sur la connaissance métacognitive, c’est-à-dire sur le fait que les étudiants et les étudiantes connaissent les stratégies d’études efficaces et savent les employer. Peu d’étudiants et d’étudiantes reçoivent des directives explicites en classe sur ces sujets. Dans cet article, nous tentons de voir si un guide d’instruction en ligne, qui comprend des informations sur des stratégies d’études fondées sur des données probantes, des questions pour effectuer des auto-évaluations, ainsi qu’un calendrier d’apprentissage pour régulariser l’emploi du temps des études, peut effectivement enseigner la connaissance métacognitive afin d’améliorer les résultats.Bien qu’il ne soit pas clair si le guide d’instruction en ligne était relié aux augmentations en matière de connaissance métacognitive, de surveillance métacognitive et de contrôle métacognitif, nous avons toutefois observé des avantages dans les résultats des étudiants et des étudiantes, en particulier parmi ceux et celles qui souffrent fortement d’anxiété quand ils et elles doivent faire des travaux importants tels que les examens finaux. Des recherches futures devraient chercher à comprendre comment les étudiants et les étudiantes avaient utilisé le guide et comment la nature de leur engagement avait affecté leurs stratégies d’études

A Metacognitive Instructional Guide to Support Effective Studying Strategies

Metacognition—the processes whereby learners assess and monitor their progress in learning (metacognitive monitoring, MM) and use these judgements of learning to make choices about what to study in the future (metacognitive control, MC)—has been shown to be beneficial to learning. However, effective learning also relies on metacognitive knowledge (MK)—that is, students’ knowledge about effective study strategies and how to employ them. Few students receive explicit in-class instruction on these topics. Here, we explore if an online instructional guide, which includes information about evidence-based study strategies, example questions for self-testing, and a study calendar to help regulate timing of studying can effectively teach MK to improve performance. While it is unclear if the online instructional guide was related to increases in MK, MM, and MC, we did observe benefits to student performance, particularly in highly anxious students on high-stake assessments such as the final examination. Future research should seek to understand how students were engaging with the guide and how the nature of the engagement impacted their study strategies

Variation in organochlorine and mercury levels in first and replacement eggs of a single-egg clutch breeder, the thick-billed murre, at a breeding colony in the Canadian Arctic

Contaminant concentrations may vary among sequentially-laid eggs in multi-egg clutches, and this variation has implications for the interpretation of contaminant concentrations in monitoring programs. The thick-billed murre (Uria lomvia) is a key species for monitoring contaminants in the Canadian Arctic and lays only a single egg per year. Therefore, the potential issue of intra-clutch variation in contaminant concentrations is avoided. However, if the egg is removed or lost early in the incubation stage, the adult female murre will relay. In this study, we examined contaminant concentrations and patterns in first-laid and replacement eggs of thick-billed murres breeding in northern Hudson Bay in order to determine whether or not these eggs could be sampled interchangeably. Concentrations of the major legacy organochlorines (e.g. PCBs, DDT, chlordanes) were generally higher, and total mercury concentrations lower, in the replacement eggs compared with the first-laid eggs. The organochlorine profile was comprised primarily of ΣDDT and Σ70PCB, and Σ70PCB was comprised primarily of hexa-hepta PCBs in both first-laid and replacement eggs. As both concentrations and organochlorine patterns showed differences between first-laid and replacement eggs, we recommend that randomly selected first-laid eggs of thick-billed murres be consistently sampled for contaminant monitoring in the Canadian Arctic