IndiaBioscience Educators' Newsletter- February 2024
Dear Educator,
Welcome to our first Educators' Newsletter of 2024!
In this newsletter, you will find stories, webinars, social media engagements, and other activities by IndiaBioscience since the beginning of this year, that might be of interest to college biology educators.
The stories we published in the last two months celebrate the ideas of interdisciplinarity and inquiry-based learning or 'learning by doing' in science. If you wish to share how you bring these elements to your classroom, with colleagues across India, then write for us. Send your ideas, in ~200 words, to education@indiabioscience.org and we will get back to you. Here are some more themes you could consider writing about.
Team IndiaBioscience is revving up for the 16th edition of our flagship event – the Young Investigators' Meeting (YIM)– which is happening in March in Bhopal. The meeting will focus on networking and mentorship of researchers who have recently started their independent research careers or are planning to do so very soon. Notably, this year, one of the talks will showcase novel pedagogical approaches in higher education, and another will highlight how scientists can contribute to school science education. If you are one of the shortlisted participants, we look forward to meeting you there.
Apart from YIMs, IndiaBioscience also supports Regional Young Investigators' Meetings (RYIMs), which bring the flavour of YIMs to the scientific community of a particular region in India. IndiaBioscience has supported seven RYIMs across India in 2023-2024. To know what they entailed, check out our coverage of RYIM Pilani and RYIM Kolkata, which took place recently. Want to organise a RYIM at your institute? Keep an eye out for the RYIM grants, which will re-open for applications in April-May 2024 for meetings across 2024-2025.
Wish to partner with us for a different online or offline event for educators or college students? Have an idea for some other resource that might be useful for educators? We would love to hear from you. Email us at education[at]indiabioscience[dot]org.
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Scroll down to learn more about our recent activities.
When someone learns to cook, they also learn some rules that are never to be broken. Are these rules backed by science? Can we test them using some simple experiments? What can undergraduate students and faculty learn from these experiments? Why are they valuable to science education? In this article, Vijeta Raghuram, the Program Manager-Education at IndiaBioscience reflects on these questions based on her experiences at a workshop.
Low exposure to research, often due to the financial constraints of college laboratories, and extensive curriculum can make studying biology unexciting for students. This short article on ‘frugal science’ describes how paper, a cheap and familiar material, has been developed into instruments to study nature and stimulate creativity and curiosity in students.
Ananya Mukherjee, who teaches Biology, and Rukma Prince, who teaches English Literature to undergraduates at Azim Premji University, have co-created a Science Communication course for science and non-science majors, which will be offered in August 2024. In this article, they share what prompted them to create this course and the kind of educational issues that the course aims to address.
Conferences offer opportunities for scientists to share their work, get feedback for it, and find new avenues of exploration. The Science Undergraduate Research Conference (SURC) hosted by Azim Premji University in December 2023 offered this experience to undergraduate students from across India pursuing science research. In this article, one of the organisers of the conference shares how students at this stage of education can benefit from such events.
Climate change, propelled by human activities, presents a substantial threat to insect populations worldwide, impacting their behavior, fitness, and distribution. Subhash Rajpurohit and his research group at Ahmedabad University, Gujarat, emphasises the vulnerability of ectothermic insects to fluctuating temperatures and humidity levels. His lab's work offers insights into the intricate relationship between environmental stress, dehydration, and insect reproductive success within the context of climate change.
The fifth Regional Young Investigators’ Meeting (RYIM) 2023-2024 took place at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani, Rajasthan from 18 to 20 January 2024. In spite of the freezing cold and foggy weather, the meeting saw a large number of attendees including mentors, young investigators, and students from all parts of the country. In this article, Rohini Karandikar shares her experience at the RYIM.
The fourth RYIM for the year 2023 – 2024 took place at Presidency University, Kolkata, from 06 to 08 December 2023. RYIM Kolkata was aimed at nurturing academic exchange aligned perfectly with the theme “Education, Research and Translation: The Triple Helix of Collaboration.”
Elly Tanaka is a developmental biologist renowned for her groundbreaking research in the field of tissue regeneration and stem cell biology. Tanaka is particularly recognized for her work on limb regeneration in axolotls, a process that has captivated scientists for its potential implications in regenerative medicine. During her talk, she took us through her scientific journey and highlighted the importance of systemic studies in regenerative biology.
Watch the recording of the webinar on YouTube. And while you enjoy it, remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
In an article published in The Hindu on 27 Feb, Karishma Kaushik, the Executive Director of IndiaBioscience, urges the scientific community to rethink the customs we follow in scientific meetings, like the religious symbolisms and the seating arrangements, and pushes for making these meetings more inclusive and non-hierarchical.
#EducatorsMonday
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.
Our question for the month of February 2024:
Which is your favourite teaching tool? What makes it so?
i wonder…’s workshop at India Science Festival 2024
Vijeta Raghuram, the Program Manager-Education at IndiaBioscience and an Associate Editor of ‘i wonder…’, a science magazine for middle and high-school teachers by Azim Premji University, co-organised a workshop for school science teachers at the India Science Festival 2024, called “Doing Science with Balloons”. She was joined by Saurav Shome, a faculty member of the School of Education at Azim Premji University, Bhopal and a fellow member of the Editorial board of the magazine.
Together they engaged their audience over the two days of the Festival (20- 21 Jan 2024) with many simple and fun experiments with surprising results, followed by insightful discussions on the science behind them. All these experiments had one thing in common – balloons! Why balloons? Because, unlike the equipment of a science lab, balloons are inexpensive, easy to handle and manipulate, have diverse uses, and – of course – fun to play with. Keep an eye out for insights from the workshop, along with activity sheets, in the upcoming issues of i wonder....
Write for i wonder...
Do you wish to engage with school science teachers, or contribute to how science is taught in schools? Then write for i wonder....
i wonder… is a magazine for middle- and high-school science teachers, published by Azim Premji University, twice a year. It is available free of cost in Hindi, English, and Kannada.
Have an idea or wondering what to write about? Then email us anytime at education@indiabioscience.org and we will get back to you.
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