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ABSTRACT Quantitative reasoning is a critical skill in biology and has been highlighted as a core competency byVision and Change. Despite its importance, students often struggle to apply mathematical skills in new contexts in biology, a process called transfer of knowledge. However, the supports and barriers that students perceive for this process remain unclear. To explore this further, we interviewed undergraduate students in an introductory biology lab course about how they understand and report the transfer of quantitative skills in these courses. We then applied these themes to the Step Back, Translate, and Extend (SBTE) framework to examine student perceptions of the supports and barriers to their knowledge transfer. Students reported different supports and barriers at each level of the transfer process. At the first step of the framework, the recognition level, students reported reflecting on previous chemistry, statistics, and physics learning as helpful cues to indicate a transfer opportunity. Others, however, reported perceiving math and science as separate subjects without overlap, causing a disconnect in their recognition of transferable knowledge. In the second level of the framework, students recall previous learning. Students reported repetition and positive dispositions toward science and math as supportive factors. In contrast, gaps of time between initial learning and new contexts and negative dispositions hindered recall ability. The final level of the SBTE framework focuses on application. Students reported being better able to apply previous learning to new contexts in the biology lab when they could relate their applied skills to “real-world” applications, external motivating factors, and future career goals. These students also reported proactively seeking outside resources to fill gaps in their understanding. Generating data in a lab setting was also mentioned by students as both a supportive factor of application when they felt confident in their answers and a hindrance to application when they felt unsure about its accuracy. 

Office hours are a part of nearly all science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, with many academic and affective benefits for students who attend. However, despite their ubiquity, there has only been limited past work examining the sources of knowledge students draw from to shape their perceptions of office hours, as well as the factors that influence students' experiences in STEM course office hours. Here, we conducted semistructured interviews with 20 students enrolled in an introductory STEM course to investigate what motivates students to attend STEM course office hours, the factors that shape their experiences in office hours, and what influenced their conceptions of office hours. We situate our work using expectancy value theory and racialized opportunity cost, identifying that students' experiences with office hours in high school and how an instructor describes office hours in a class and on the syllabus influence students' expectancies and perceived value and costs for attending office hours. In addition, we find that most students are motivated by the need for help with course content, though some students report a higher perceived cost of attending office hours when they have lower self-efficacy in the course. We conclude by providing recommendations for instructors to encourage student engagement with office hours. 

ABSTRACT The 2011 reportVision and Change: A Call to Action(V&C) resulted from a national effort to rethink biology curriculum.V&Coutlines core concepts and core competencies for biology undergraduates and promotes evidence-based pedagogy, undergraduate research, and inclusive practices. However, it is unclear how much biology educators know aboutV&Cand what motivates educators’ development of their teaching philosophy and practices. We leveraged the Promoting Active Learning and Mentoring (PALM) Network, a group that introduced evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) to instructors through mentoring, journal clubs, and a community of practice, to investigate how muchV&Chas influenced educator knowledge and motivation. Through focus groups, 16 mentors and 22 fellows were asked about their motivations to join PALM, familiarity withV&C, how they learned aboutV&C, and how PALM and/orV&Cshaped the development of their teaching philosophies and strategies. We found that the teaching philosophies and practices of these educators align strongly withV&Cprinciples.V&Cprovided expectancy (established value), while PALM contributed to greater instructor self-efficacy in EBIPs, overall resulting in reformed teaching philosophies and practices. This model highlights the importance of mentorship and community to successfully drive biology education reform. 

Quantitative reasoning (QR) is a key part of biology. Here, we apply the theoretical framework of student noticing to investigate into how students learn QR in an intro bio lab course. Using observations and interviews, we characterize what students notice when working with QR, their depth of noticing, and the factors that shape their noticing. 

ABSTRACT The 2011Vision & Changereport outlined several recommendations for transforming undergraduate biology education, sparking multiple pedagogical reform efforts. Among these was the Promoting Active Learning and Mentoring (PALM) network, an NSF-funded program that provided mentorship and training to instructors on implementing active learning in the classroom. Here, we provide a perspective on how members of the biology education community in PALM view the recommendations ofVision & Change, drawing upon our experiences both as members of PALM and as leaders of an associated project funded by another NSF grant that hosted PALM alumni at various conferences. These efforts have allowed us to gain insight into how our alumni think ofVision & Change, including how they interpret its recommendations, the challenges and opportunities that they view for implementing these recommendations, and the areas they see as critical to be addressed in future national reports for supporting undergraduate biology education. We synthesize these voices here, providing perspectives from a diverse group of biology instructors on what they think aboutVision & Change, and provide recommendations for the biology education community based upon these PALM community voices.