BioE 301

Professional development for bioengineering PhD students

Web Page

http://bspace.berkeley.edu

BioE 301 is open to:

• Bioengineering PhD students• Students currently GSIing BioE

courses

To pass, a student must:

• Have no more than two unexcused absences from class

• Participate in the peer evaluations• Prepare NSF and NDSEG fellowship

applications • Participate in at least one iteration of

independent review on your grant application

• Participate in the ethics discussions

Your life(for the next

few years)

3 rotations completed by end of April

1st year

2nd year

year n

year (n-1)

join a lab

select project; assemble committee; collect data

take quals exam

develop plan to finish with advisor; figure out what to do next

get committee on boardsubmit final paper

GSI; experience 20% triumph, 80% agony

Your life(for the next

few years)

3 rotations completed by end of April

1st year

2nd year

year n

year (n-1)

join a lab

select project; assemble committee; collect data

take quals exam

develop plan to finish with advisor; figure out what to do next

GSI; experience 20% triumph, 80% agony

interview; network; give talks

Goals

• Learn to teach fairly and effectively• Learn to work ethically and responsibly• Develop as independent professional

and mentor

Before class begins

Download & follow the GSI checklist online

Dealing with the distressed student

• Refer to the UCB Gold Folder• Options: students can receive a late drop from

or Incomplete (I) grade for a class• You can refer them to a professional

– Counseling and Psychological Services (CPS) – 3rd floor Tang, 2222 Bancroft, M-F 8AM-6PM (drop-ins 10AM-noon & 1-5:30PM), 510-642-9494

– Confidential mental health services at UCSF– Engineering Student Services counselling:

christinez@uhs.berkeley.edu, 510-643-7850– For emergency situations

• (Most) students are legal adults – it’s not for you to involve their parents

Students with disabilities

• Berkeley’s Disabled Students Program (DSP) will auto-generate a letter to the instructor explaining each student’s needs

• Berkeley has atest proctoring assistance program for DSP students

Effective use of boards and slides

Tips for working at the board

• Write twice as big as you think you need to

• Clarity is more important than speed

• Don’t talk at the board; it don’t care

Tips for preparing lecture slides

• If the text is there to remind you, cut it

• If you don’t plan to walk your audience through a figure or equation, cut it

• The last thing you say on slide (n) should segue into slide (n+1)

• (Simple) animations >> laser pointer

• Don’t talk at the slides; they don’t care either

• You see, I’m afraid that I’ll forget to say something on this slide

• So I make sure that everything I want to say is on the slide

• But that means that my audience is just reading the slide, and they’re not really paying any attention to what I’m saying

• If I were more comfortable with the material, I wouldn’t need the slide to say everything that I plan on saying

• One advantage is, if I write enough text, no one can possibly read all of this

• I can write any gibberish and unless you’re a speed reader, I’m safe

• This slide is my “Great American novel”• It was the best of slides, it was the worst

of slides…– No, wait: It was a dark and stormy slide…

• As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into an unreadable PowerPoint slide

How students learn

PQ4R• Preview – What are you studying? Why?• Query – Formulate questions about the

material• Read – Read carefully, answering your queries

as you go• Reflect – Pause to:

– Relate the material to things already known– Relate subtopics to the overall theme (e.g., “Why is

this subject part of this chapter?”)– Resolve contradictions– Solve problems

• Recite – The main points into your own words• Review

Methods that do not work

Highlighting Virtue grinding

Mastery learning

• Students must understand lesson (n) before moving on to lesson (n+1)

• Students often don’t realize that they don’t understand lesson (n)

Distributed practice

• Cramming is less effective than returning to material after a break

• The optimal break is ~7 days

• Revisit material in lectures, discussions, & homeworks

Situation

You solve a problem during a discussion section. This problem is similar to one on last week’s homework, with one minor

change.

When you are done with problem B, the section becomes quite lively, with a great deal of confusion over how the problems

are “really” different.

How do you react in class? How would you change your approach next time?

Situation

Your class has been performing well on homeworks, but fares poorly on the midterm.

How do you react?

How would you do things differently for the second half of class?

Motivation

• Always emphasize effort over innate ability

• High and low states of stress impair performance

• Get students thinking about what they want to get out of the material

• Average student attention span: 7-10 minutes

Active learning(how to avoid the following)

Situation

A student team is exploring the possibility of using a drug delivery device to deliver a certain drug to the retina. According to their results and analysis, they believe that the device will not

work for this application. They are, therefore, worried about their project grade.

In talking through their results, you find no significant errors in their approach or their analysis, and, with minor reservations,

agree with their assessment.

How do you respond to the team? How would you change your approach to projects in future classes?

Situation

In your ~30 student discussion section, you find that the in-class discussions are dominated by two

students in particular. One student is quite familiar with the material from their research experience and

typically has the correct answer; the other is very keen to provide an answer but often misses the mark.

How do you react?

Asking questions in class

What distinguishes a “good” in-class question from a “bad” in-class question?

Why?

Soliciting feedback

• Ask specific questions

• Ask informally (email/poll)

• Do a formal midterm evaluation

• Consider exam and HW grades

Situation

One group in your discussion has been performing excellently all semester, and you’ve developed a rapport with them.

You ask them for informal feedback, and general they are enjoying the section and have found it useful in understanding

lecture material and in moving their project forward.

How do you proceed?

Gender and race in an engineering classroom

With thanks to Elena Kassianidou

What behaviors contribute to inequality?

Stereotype threat

Martens (2005) Steele and Aronson (1995)

Impostor syndrome

thisisindexed.com

Bias in hiring a lab manager

Handelsman, PNAS, 2012

Bias in recommendations

Trix and Psenka, Discourse & Society, 2003

Bias in recommendations

Trix and Psenka, Discourse & Society, 2003

Bias in perceptionHow genuine, humble, and kind was

Roizen?

Study by Anderson and Flynn, original slides by Anderson (unpublished data)

Bias in perceptionHow power-hungry, self-promoting, and

disingenuous was Roizen?

Study by Anderson and Flynn, original slides by Anderson (unpublished data)

Bias in perceptionHow competent, self-confident, and

effective was Roizen?

Study by Anderson and Flynn, original slides by Anderson (unpublished data)

Bias in perceptionWould you like, hire, enjoy working with

Roizen?

Study by Anderson and Flynn, original slides by Anderson (unpublished data)

Grant review bias

Bornmann, J of Infometrics, 2006

Log odds ratio (-0.25)

22% in favor of men

Log odds ratio (0.25)

28% in favor of women

Bias in paper review(from single blind to double blind

review)

Budden, Trends in Ecol. and Evol., 2008

Citations bias

Sugimoto, Nature, 2013

What can we do as educators and mentors to

improve things?

Self-integrity (vs. stereotype)

• Students identify their most important value(s) from a list

• Brief written exploration of their choices

• Total time: 15 minutes

Cohen, Science, 2006 See also: Ito, Science, 2010

Belonging (vs. impostor syndrome)

• Students given a narrative “framing social adversity in school as shared and short-lived”

• Students then write and film personal experiences in line with the narrative

Cohen, Science, 2011

Goals setting

Linder, IEEE sessions, 2010

Goals setting

Linder, IEEE sessions, 2010

Post-intervention

Intervention efficacy depends on the teacher

• Form optimistic student-teacher relationships– Know names– Express belief that all students belong and can master the

material– Encourage students regardless of status

• Nonjudgmental responsiveness– Avoid direct evaluation of the content of student answers– Check answers by referring to previous knowledge– Guide students to refine their ideas

• Value multiple perspectives– Encourage a variety of approaches (analytical, modeling,

different assumptions, etc.)

• Stress the expandability of knowledge through effort

Kreutzer, Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research, 2012

Situation

A student makes an appointment with you to speak privately. The student’s performance in class has been poor, with several homeworks not turned in

and a midterm grade that is well below the average.

The student admits to feeling overwhelmed and having difficulties this semester, and is not sure

whether they belong in engineering.

How do you respond?

Situation

In a student presentation, one group consistently refers to a hypothetical surgeon (who would be

using the technology that they are modeling in their project) as “he”.

How do you respond?

Situation

Think of a situation from your undergraduate experience where you were unsatisfied with an interaction with a teacher or mentor. If you are

comfortable doing so, share this experience with your group.

What mistakes did these mentors make? How might they have better handled the situation?