Eye on Education

The Horizon Report, the go-to guide for emerging educational technology published by the New Media Consortium (www.nmc.org/horizon), projected in 2005 that educational gaming would become a significant learning tool within two or three years. The 2008 report identifies game play...

Introductory undergraduate biology courses often fail to truly engage students in the subject matter, a problem that sometimes causes students to switch out of biology majors. The tra­ditional, lecture-only curriculum has already been shunned in middle-school and high-school science classrooms,...

How do you change the way science is taught? You might start by giving teachers a second chance—or CHANCE, in this instance. Jacqueline McLaughlin, assistant professor of biology at Penn State University, is doing just that through an innovative professional...

More than half of the doctoral degrees in biology are earned by women. The proportion of women in postdoctoral, tenure-track, and tenured faculty positions, however, is not as large. The question is, why? WEBS—Women Evolving the Biological Sciences—is an attempt...

Joslyn Woodard is doing something she never thought she would—teaching environmental science and biology to high school students in Chicago’s south side. As an undergraduate student in molecular biology and neuroscience at Yale, Woodard was sure she wanted to go...

Across the landscape of informatics, particularly biological and ecological informatics, are quite a few women in leadership positions at important organizations, such as the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, and the National Ecological...

The world is getting warmer, but that’s just the beginning. Glaciers will melt, sea levels will rise and flood coastal cities, hurricanes will increase in intensity, entire ecosystems will be lost—and humans carry most of blame. If we act now,...

While many educators recognize the importance of “scientific teaching,” they are less certain about how to engage in this process. One approach taken by the developers of Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology (TIEE; http://tiee.ecoed.net), a peer-reviewed, Web-based collection of...

At the 2003 annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America (BSA), keynote speaker Bruce Alberts offered members an educational challenge: Bridge the connections between scientists and science classrooms, and develop inquiry-based programs that encourage hands-on student participation in science....

Though others might be concerned about adding to their already long list of responsibilities, David Carr says that spending a summer mentoring a local high school teacher through a research project was completely worthwhile. Carr, acting director of the University...

Models are powerful tools for understanding systems and solving ecological problems, but they overwhelm many students when they are first presented in life science courses. Models are often perceived as irrelevant, mathematically complex, or too abstract. Yet students need to...

Is America's scientific community an accurate representation of America? Most scientists say no. There are several underrepresented minority groups in the sciences—notably African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Alaska Natives. This lack of diversity has been a particular...

Media headlines question scientists' concerns about global warming. Magazines advertise weight loss products — results guaranteed. Web-based articles and best-selling books explain the evolution of species as "intelligent design" creationism. Students are bombarded daily with claims backed by "scientific research," but where do they obtain the skills and knowledge necessary to distinguish science from pseudoscience?

When Claudia Bonilla enrolled in biology class, she knew very little about plant ecology, and had no idea that it would soon become a significant part of her life. Claudia’s class was part of the EnvironMentors Project, based in Washington,...

Biology faculty at research institutions belong to a community of scientists. They communicate regularly with others in their discipline, sharing research problems, methods, and conclusions. But what happens when they have a teaching problem? Where do they turn when a...

Jay Hatch, associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Minnesota (UMN) and associate curator of fishes at the Bell Museum of Natural History in Minneapolis, has been a scientist for over 25 years. During his career, he has...

Biologists cannot solve the problem of invasive species by themselves. Doing that requires a coordinated effort between scientists, policymakers, and others in the community. Unfortunately, the skills necessary to address complex environmental problems are not traditionally taught to scientists as...

During a BioQUEST workshop five years ago, Garry Duncan discovered the potential of bioinformatics. Using innovative software to manipulate biological data and solve problems, he realized, held enormous promise for him not just as a researcher but also as an...

This is the fifth year of the National Science Foundation's innovative partnership program, Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education, more commonly known as the GK-12 program. When Rita Colwell launched the program in 1999, soon after becoming director of NSF,...

In its program announcement for Undergraduate Mentoring in Environmental Biology (UMEB), the National Science Foundation clearly spells out whom the program is meant to attract: "members of those racial and ethnic groups underrepresented in science, mathematics, and engineering: Native Americans...

Plants fuel life on Earth by tapping the sun's energy. But if plants are the main mediators between the physical and biological worlds, why do most people tend to appreciate animals so much more than plants? That question is at...

The Biosciences Education Network is "a one-stop shopping area for resources from all digital libraries of BEN partners," explains Yolanda George, deputy director of Education and Human Resources at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She...

How often does the public get to see scientists having fun doing science? And what if everyone who came to watch, young or old, went away with a much better understanding of biodiversity? It happens every year in many...

Biology research is on a roll: In the last 50 years, we have discovered the basic links among all living things through our growing understanding of the structure of DNA, and scientists have gone on to map the genomes of...

Biology teachers are in a real bind. With the current emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing, they have less and less time to teach more and more information, leaving very little opportunity to ensure that students are learning what's important. "Look...

The impetus behind Faculty Institutes for Reforming Science Teaching (FIRST) is elegantly simple. "We expect team members to bring the same kind of reflective judgment to their teaching as they do to their disciplinary research," says Diane Ebert-May, a plant...

Learning does not stop when the school bell rings or when a degree is complete. We continue to learn, through work and experience, by necessity and for personal interest, as long as we live. The United States is rapidly becoming...

Editor's note: This is the first installment of a new series, appearing quarterly, that will look at success stories in education. Alan Berkowitz recognized he had an opportunity to develop an innovative education program when he became the Institute for...