About this Event
CITRAL, UC Santa Barbara Library, Room 1576
Speaker: Dr. Jenny Knight (University of Colorado Boulder)
Can students improve their ability to reflect on their learning, and change their study strategies? We are often unaware of our own learning processes, are resistant to changing our approaches, and frequently overly optimistic about how well we understand concepts. Thus, teaching self-regulated learning strategies, including metacognitive reflection, is notoriously challenging. We have collected data from several semesters of students enrolled in an undergraduate genetics course that promotes such practices, and will report on our successes and plans for further interventions.
Dr. Jenny Knight has a B.A. in Biology from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Michigan. She studied developmental genetics in C. elegans as a postdoctoral fellow before joining the faculty at the University of Colorado Boulder. She has been teaching undergraduates at all levels for over twenty years, ranging from freshmen-level genetics to senior-level developmental biology, along with graduate courses in pedagogy. After transitioning from lab bench to biology education research in 2004, she has developed concept assessments, studied the benefits of peer discussion of clicker questions, investigated how students solve complex problems in genetics, and is currently working on how to stimulate self-regulation and metacognition. She has also worked extensively in faculty development, coordinating the MCDB Science Education Initiative at CU and the Mountain West Regional National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in Biology. She served as the president of the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research (SABER), is an editor for the journal CBE-Life Sciences Education, and the Editor in Chief for the journal CourseSource.