IndiaBioscience Educators' Newsletter – April 2024
Dear Educator,
Last month, we concluded the 16th edition of our flagship event, the Young Investigators' Meeting (YIM) 2024 in Bhopal. YIMs enable biology researchers in the early years of independent research careers to be mentored by senior scientists on setting up independent labs, balancing teaching and research, managing funds, motivating students, and more.
In addition to scientific sessions and talks on career journeys, YIM 2024 brought forth unique sessions for researchers who are passionate about teaching. It featured two talks that celebrated the practice of teaching biology and science in general. Scroll down for a gist of these talks.
The meeting also inspired several researchers to consider writing for IndiaBioscience about their experiences with teaching. One of them, Tejaswini Pachpor, wrote an article for us this month about how she engaged her students in experiential learning, by asking them to design bioreactors using everyday materials. Read her article here. While there, do not forget to check out the other entries in our Education column.
Do you want to write for us? Here are some topics to think about.
To know more about what happened at YIM 2024, read our reports on the event (Part 1 and Part 2 ).
Apart from publishing articles, we also organise webinars on biology education, the latest of which happened this month. The speaker was Aswathy Raveendran, an educator and researcher at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Mumbai. She explored a very pertinent question: Can biographies of women scientists help biology education? Find more details about the webinar and the recording of the same, here.
We also engage educators on social media through our #EducatorsMonday posts on X/formerly Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. Know a colleague who may be interested in our activities? Invite them to subscribe to our newsletter. Want to share a new idea or give us feedback on our work, you can reach us at education[at]indiabioscience[dot]org.
Now, please scroll down to know the latest happenings from IndiaBioscience for educators.
Tamralipta Patra, a faculty member of the School of Arts and Sciences at APU, teaches biology to students from diverse disciplines. At YIM 2024, Patra spoke about how art can bridge the gap between disciplines. She used examples from her own classroom where students utilise folk art (including the historical Gond art of Madhya Pradesh) to cultivate an appreciation of the local flora and fauna. She also pointed out that art can be used to make the classroom more inclusive for students who prefer art over words as a mode of expression and communication.
Rediscovering school science
Vijeta Raghuram, IndiaBioscience and i wonder...
Vijeta Raghuram, the Program Manager-Education at IndiaBioscience, also wears the hat of an Associate Editor of "i wonder…," a magazine for middle- and high-school science teachers published by Azim Premji University. In her talk, titled “Rediscovering School Science,” Raghuram highlighted the need to incorporate more elements of science practice into science education. She proposed that the best way to achieve this would be to enable conversations between scientists and science teachers, who, as she pointed out, share many commonalities. One of the avenues to initiate such conversations is "i wonder…" and its webinars, she added.
A laboratory can be a great place for experiential learning. However, using set protocols and kits can deprive students of this opportunity and make them disengaged learners. In this article, Tejaswini Panchpor, an educator from Dr Vishwanath Karad’s MIT World Peace University, Pune shares a frugal science approach to provide experiential learning to students and stimulate their creativity.
Teachers often rely on tests and exams to understand how well their students are learning the subject. However, the traditional approaches of assessment end with giving marks or grades to the students. What if teachers could do more than just give marks to students? In this article, an educator tries a different approach to assessing answer sheets and shares her experiences from it.
A flipped classroom is a traditional classroom turned upside down! This means that the students listen to lectures, videos and other course materials at home, and solve problems (normally done as 'homework') or engage in discussions with their classmates and teachers in the classroom. This article explains why such a mode of learning is useful with the help of a case study from an Indian context.
Tools based on artificial intelligence (AI), like ChatGPT, are becoming increasingly popular among students, perhaps to a fault, causing rising concerns among educators. But can these tools be useful in some ways to educators too? If so, how can they leverage them to augment their students' learning experiences? And what can they do to prevent students' over-dependence on these tools? In this article, an educator shares her explorations into these questions.
The 16th edition of the annual Young Investigators’ Meeting (YIM 2024) was held in the central Indian city of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, from 11 to 15 March 2024. Around 120 young investigators and postdoctoral fellows, along with representatives from funding agencies, mentors, and institutional representatives, attended the meeting for special talks, networking sessions, workshops, panel discussion, and poster presentations.
This article is the second in a two-part series reporting on the proceedings of the 16th Young Investigators’ Meeting (YIM 2024) held in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, from 11 to 15 March 2024. In the second part of this report, we discuss the takeaways from interactive ‘Ask Us Anything’ panel discussion, insights from the ice-breaker session, and the proceedings from the PDF satellite meeting that followed the YIM 2024.
A global collaborative study published in Nature emphasises investigating non-coding regions of DNA to understand what defines primates and distinguishes humans among them. The study holds significance not only for human health but also for the conservation of endangered primate species, providing insights into genetic health and population dynamics.
This webinar spotlighted the life and times of E K Janaki Ammal to explore the role of biographies in placing biological sciences of the early 20th century in its social-historical context. It also invited reflections on the value of situating biology in its social context in its teaching and learning.
On the last Monday of every month, we post a question for educators on all of our social media handles. We invite you to post your answers, see responses by others, and enjoy the threads of conversation.
April 2024
What would you like to change about the way students are assessed?
Karishma Kaushik, the Executive Director of IndiaBioscience, recently wrote an article for Nature India. In the article she wrote about the findings from a survey by IndiaBioscience, which revealed the challenges faced by early-career life science researchers in the country. The survey captured responses from 374 independent life science researchers from research institutions, universities, organisations, and colleges across India.
Curated resources
This segment features educational resources and useful pedagogical tools from across the web, for biology teachers. These resources were not generated by IndiaBioscience.
The TROP ICSU (https://tropicsu.org) is a project by International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS) and 25 other partner organisations. It offers a large collection of digital teaching resources to integrate climate studies into the curriculum of various disciplines, including Science, Mathematics, Social Sciences, and Humanities. These resources can be used by teachers at high school and undergraduate levels. Its resources for biology teachers can be found here.
Jobs, grants and events
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