<\/p>\n
Happy Thursday, fellow ONL-ers!<\/p>\n
Before we get into a beautiful, wonderful four-day weekend here in Sweden, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on openness and how to incorporate it into in-person natural science courses. Although courses with in-person components will never be as accessible to those from underrepresented groups as, e.g, MOOCs, there are times where bench- or fieldwork is necessary to develop as a scientist. Unsurprisingly, those times are usually the ones where PhD students, such as myself, are asked to teach.<\/p>\n
For the past five years, I\u2019ve been a lecturer and lab assistant for a course in conservation biology. The course has been held both in-person and online (2020 was rough<\/em>), but we\u2019ve transitioned mostly to in-person teaching this year due to the number of workshops and labs in the course plan. Regardless of course format, I\u2019ve always aimed to make each iteration of ConBio more open and accessible to underrepresented students than the last. I feel that promoting openness is especially pertinent to education in the natural sciences, as a culture of openness will naturally foster behaviours important to scientific reproducability \u2013 like data and code sharing.<\/p>\n But perhaps I\u2019m getting a bit off-topic. The real question I want to ask today is that of how we can begin to make science education more open \u2013 even when it can\u2019t be fully online. I\u2019ve listed four of my suggestions below, but I\u2019d love to read more about what others are doing in their classrooms!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you have other tips on how to make primarily lab-based courses more open, let me know in the comments below! I\u2019ve yet to take a formal pedagogy course, so I\u2019m happy to hear any and all suggestions.<\/p>\n Until next time,<\/p>\n Hanna<\/p>\n Works cited:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n
\nPro tip: it really helps attendance if you offer to bring a cute puppy (see above photo for an example of a cute puppy).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n