The Labster Podcast

April and SJ
  • 5.0 (3)
  • EDUCATION
The Labster Podcast

The Labster Podcast gives science educators like you a chance to hear from peers who teach with Labster’s virtual labs and other educational technologies. We’ll reflect on learning and curriculum design, and leave you feeling inspired and energized about reaching and teaching your students.

  1. 06/01/2023

    “I see my mother in all my students here”

    In this episode, our special guest Dr. Edgardo Sanabria-Valentín shares the story of how his mother’s experience as a first-generation college student shaped his approach to teaching biology and continues to inform his leadership as Associate Director of PRISM, the Program for Research Initiatives in Science and Math at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a Hispanic-Serving institution within the City University of New York (CUNY). You’ll hear exactly how PRISM intentionally “meets students where they are” by actively recruiting undergraduate forensics students for faculty mentoring, career research, and professional development opportunities. PRISM increases student persistence and completion and has been recognized as a model for excellence for improving the number of underrepresented students in the STEM pipeline by the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences. We first got to know Edgardo when he began teaching with Labster, and we’re proud to say that he was a 2022 winner of the Labster STEM Excellence Award. Stay tuned for the end of this episode, when Edgardo flips the script and interviews SJ!

    27 min

  2. 05/18/2023

    How Bonnie Nieves teaches science through the lens of social, emotional, and behavioral instruction

    In this conversation, Bonnie Nieves, M. Ed., shares how she “shrinks” class sizes, differentiates instruction with creative grouping, and guides her students to use ChatGPT prompts as a tool to track and summarize their research in a way that helps them to flesh out their own, unique ideas. This episode is Part Two of SJ’s conversation with Bonnie Nieves, M. Ed., a biology teacher at Nipmuc Regional High School in Massachusetts and author of the book Be Awesome on Purpose.

    21 min

  3. 05/04/2023

    “Letting go” to lead a student-driven biology course

    In this conversation, we meet Bonnie Nieves, M. Ed., a high school biology teacher who has taken an evidence-based, iterative approach to optimize student learning outcomes without increasing her time spent outside of class. Listen as Bonnie tells the true story of the aha! moment that followed her painful realization that her students were signing out bathroom passes more often when she was talking than at any other time during class. Equipped with nothing more than a gradebook, student feedback, and her own observations, Bonnie put her hypotheses to the test and experimented with student-driven, self-directed learning. You’ll hear everything she tried to reach the point where learning outcomes in her project-based course now rival the outcomes of traditional, teacher-driven courses - while still targeting the same content standards.

    23 min

  4. 04/20/2023

    Dr. Bruno Poellhuber’s research on how to motivate and engage students with Labster

    What is the “best” way to teach with Labster simulations, according to the data? Dr. Bruno Poellhuber wanted to find out. Bruno is a professor of education and Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Montreal. Partnering with co-researchers at the University of Montreal and six other colleges, he ran an experiment with 6,000 students and 39 instructors who participated over the course of three terms. Bruno’s team noticed the most successful instructors leaned into using tools based on the pre-briefing, briefing, integration, and debriefing phases from the Jeffries model of teaching with simulation in the nursing field. They observed that instructors with highly engaged and motivated students shared specific pedagogical practices, which you’ll hear about in this episode.

    23 min

  5. 04/06/2023

    Teaching high school biology as a digital pioneer

    Meet Matthias Polte, the first public high school teacher in Germany to teach with Labster. Motivated by his belief that students need to learn more than just facts, Matthias sought out tools and techniques that would allow his students to build 21st-century skills like creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. In this episode, Matthias tells how he spent years advocating for funding to provide at-school internet access for every biology student at RHG Krefeld. Today, Matthias is successfully teaching with digital learning tools and active learning strategies that help his students understand science at a deeper level - and training new teachers to do the same.

    33 min

  6. 03/29/2022

    Biotech in Action Encourages High School Students to Invent a Better Future

    Memorable Moments:  Nia: [00:04:32] We tell students about a neurodegenerative disease, and this year we focus on Alzheimer's disease, which is a really terrible and prevalent disease that more and more students are coming in contact with over the course of their life. And then we challenge them to do research on their own neurodegenerative disease and really identify opportunities where invention could happen.  Alex: [00:08:30] So we use Labster in Biotech in Action and we'll tell the students this is kind of like a video game meets science and it's going to be really cool. And it's always exciting to watch the students say they love Labster, and it's a great way for us to show them, you know what science looks like.  Stephanie: [00:09:09] What the students were telling us was how they made such great friendships with people that they'd never known before, that didn't live in their backyard. And they'd passed information to stay in touch just like you would at a regular face-to-face camp. And this just stood in stark contrast to what I was reading in a lot of people's experiences trying to teach online.  Nia: [00:14:19] We have actual professionals who are really, really passionate about their job and what it is that they are doing every day in the lab, and they don't really dumb down their language for the students. We tell the students that it's OK for them to be confused and to not know what's going on, but to really ask questions, be engaged and be participatory as best as they're able so that then they get the most out of the program.  Alex: [00:16:22] Our end goal is that places like Biogen have this diversity of thinking, have this diversity of employees, and it starts with the students, right? It starts with the people that are interested in science. Those are the people that are going to become scientists.  Alex: [00:17:15] I think that's always my biggest goal when I go into teaching, if they come out thinking, ‘I can do something in science, that is completely feasible for me in my career and my future’, then I think we've had a successful program.  Stephanie: [00:18:34] We had one young man who came to the first summer where we had the Parkinson's theme and his father actually was struggling with Parkinson's, so he had an idea for a glove. And he presented that at the culminating event in the program. And then he kept coming back to us for coaching. And he ended up entering the Massachusetts Invention Convention, and he won at that level and went on to compete in the national competition at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, with his invention.  Episode 20 Transcript:  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XxlMHFcG44Dl8XMlU1j-nHNOutJhFohq?usp=sharing More Resources: Biotech in Action Program (free): https://lemelson.mit.edu/biotech-action/ Try Labster now (free):  https://www.labster.com/free-trial/  Subscribe to our monthly newsletter:  https://www.labster.com/newsletter/  Find Labster on Social:  https://twitter.com/labster https://www.facebook.com/teamlabster https://www.linkedin.com/company/labster

    25 min

  7. 03/07/2022

    How to prepare science students to go out and change the world

    Memorable Moments: Lori Banks [00:03:11] I think the biggest part of that is just them not choosing to do something because of a negative interaction that they've had with the professor, which has unfortunately been more common than it should be with those of us in previous generations where somebody says, 'Well, you know, well, your kind of people don't do that 'or 'that's not really a woman thing’ or whatever, both of which I have personally heard.Lori Banks [00:03:54] In my research, we work on novel antiviral development, which is obviously very needed right now. But the bigger thing that we're doing is training people to feel confident in themselves and their scientific ability so they can go out and change the world.Lori Banks [00:09:18] What helps me think, you know, very clearly and very intentionally, I think about how to coach the undergrads in terms of really thinking about goal setting, self-awareness, stress management, you know, in all of these habits that it would behoove them to develop well early so that when they come to graduate school, they really have good practice in these areas and they'll be able to just sort of you know, coast instead of hitting the learning curve the way that a lot of others of us have.Lori Banks [00:16:30] It's good that they can initially get sort of a first pass of the information from the textbook. But I'm finding that particularly with the Labster modules that I use in almost all my classes now, finding another way to stimulate the neurons is always better.Lori Banks [00:19:32] I think it's super important to have these conversations and for people to know and understand that making sure that our students are engaged in the material and feel welcome in the space is as important, if not more important, than the content that we're actually delivering. Because if they don't feel like we see them, they're not going to hear what we say.   Episode 19 Transcript:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EAGl60yqYfJKTcJnC2n_1Ysvbxka38ne/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=103492469363522367891&rtpof=true&sd=true More Resources: Try Labster now: https://www.labster.com/  Subscribe to our monthly newsletter: https://www.labster.com/newsletter/  Find Labster on Social:  https://twitter.com/labster https://www.facebook.com/teamlabster https://www.linkedin.com/company/labster/

    22 min

  8. 01/31/2022

    What’s the value of a liberal arts education to future scientists?

    Memorable Moments: Dr. Lori Banks: They're definitely learning the nuts and bolts of the chemistry, the biology, the physics and the math, but in more of an application or problem-based learning kind of way rather than just these are the things that we need you to memorize because we said so.  Dr. Lori Banks: You do need to consider what are you sending these people out into the world with now that you've granted them this bachelor's degree, what are they actually really going to be able to do with it? And do they have the skills to walk on someone's job and be productive or to go out into public service? Or, you know, a number of different things, but enough that they're able to sustain themselves?  Dr. Lori Banks: The learning curve for a lot of people is so huge, particularly for students who don't have some sort of familial institutional knowledge of how graduate education works. So I actually was only recently made aware of a statistic that more people who are getting PhDs come from families where someone already has a Ph.D. than not.  Dr. Lori Banks: What I worked on with the post baccs was really helping them understand what they were getting into and sort of the "off-menu items" that they needed to be aware of so that they could increase their success.  Dr. Lori Banks: As we think about sort of the difference between what is helping us focus purely on the science and what has been accepted within the scientific profession because it was good for the people that were allowed to do it, we need to be aware of that and address it as such as we now have lots of people in these spaces who don't look like what the profession used to look like 50 years ago.  Episode 18 Transcript:  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GUbHSqC_U_6sOG8SedOC-PfPCzzIgKnr?usp=sharing More Resources: Try Labster now:  https://www.labster.com/  Subscribe to our monthly newsletter:  https://www.labster.com/newsletter/  Find Labster on Social:  https://twitter.com/labster  https://www.facebook.com/teamlabster  https://www.linkedin.com/company/labster/

    22 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

The Labster Podcast gives science educators like you a chance to hear from peers who teach with Labster’s virtual labs and other educational technologies. We’ll reflect on learning and curriculum design, and leave you feeling inspired and energized about reaching and teaching your students.

Information

  • Creator
    April and SJ
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2023
  • Episodes
    26
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2020 - 2021. Labster.
  • Show Website
    The Labster Podcast

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