Offerdahl and Montplaisir featured in "Best of" list for 2014
Offerdahl and Montplaisir's paper entitled, "Student-generated reading questions: Diagnosing student thinking with diverse formative assessments" was featured on Faculty Focus in a "Best of 2014" list celebrating scholarship of teaching and learning. The original paper was published in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education.
REU Travel Awards
Congratulations to Merry Gillaspie, Anne Kelton, and Rachel Salter, recipients of the 2014 Growing Up STEM Travel Award! These amazing students will present their REU research at several conferences this coming academic year:
Merry Gillaspie will present her work, "Evaluation of representations in general chemistry textbooks: Affordances and challenges" at the annual meeting of the Association for Science Teacher Education in Portland, OR.
Anne Kelton will present her work, "Diamond in the rough: Data mining for predictions of student performance" at the Southeastern Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Nashville, TN.
Rachel Salter hopes to present her work, "Level up: Capturing upper-division student understanding of natural selection" at the annual meeting of AAAS in San Jose, CA.
Recent publications from the Momsen Lab
The Momsen lab has two publications in the most recent issue of CBE - Life Sciences education:
"Attention “Blinks” Differently for Plants and Animals", which investigates the physiological underpinnings of plant blindness and represents a collaboration with visual and cognitive neuroscientist, Ben Balas.
"Introductory Biology Students’ Conceptual Models and Explanations of the Origin of Variation", which uses student-generated concept models to uncover student understanding of mutation. This represents a collaboration with Elena Bray Speth (St Louis University) and Tammy Long (Michigan State University).
Anne Kelton to present at SERMACS 2014
Anne Kelton, CiDER REU 2014 student in the Offerdahl group, will present results from her summer research at the 66th Southeastern Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society (SERMACS) in Nashville, TN. In addition to presenting her poster (Diamond in the rough: Data mining for predictions of student performance), Anne used skills acquired in her REU experience to run some statistical analyses for research that will be presented as an oral presentation as well.
CiDER REU kicks off for second summer
May 27th marked the beginning of the 2014 Growing UP STEM Research Experience for Undergraduates program at NDSU. This year's cohort joins us from diverse undergraduate institutions from around the country.
Prosper Amponsah, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Erika Offerdahl, mentor
Manju Connolly, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Warren Christensen, mentor
Danielle Freiermuth, Bethel University
Jennifer Momsen and Jon Dees, mentors
Merry Gillaspie, Wartburg College
James Nyachwaya, mentor
Anne Kelton, Lee University
Erika Offerdahl and Jeff Boyer, mentors
Marci Lessman, Iowa State University
Lisa Montplaisir and Tara Slominski, mentors
Wil Markus, Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Mila Kryjevskaia, mentor
Caitlin Rainey, Middle Tennessee State University
Warren Christensen, mentor
Rachel Salter, Western Carolina University
Jenni Momsen and Lisa Montplaisir, mentors
Corey Stockburger, Middle Tennessee State University
Mila Kryjevskaia, mentor
Biochemistry Education Research Group @NDSU to present at Experimental Biology
Dustin Mueller, undergraduate research assistant in the Offerdahl Lab, will present his work entitled, "Digital exhaust: an analysis of students’ interactions with online learning tools" on Monday, April 28th at 11:20 a.m. (Room 14B of the San Diego Convention Center).
Dr. Erika Offerdahl will present "Data-driven assessment techniques to catalyze student learning" on Sunday.
Kryjevskaia to present colloquium at University of North Dakota
Dr. Mila Kryjevskaia will present her work entitled, "Examining inconsistencies in student reasoning approaches in physics: Intuitive vs. formal thinking" for the Physics Department Colloquium Series at University of North Dakota on April 4th, at 4 p.m.
Seminar Announcement: Student Perceptions of External Representations in Chemistry
Abstract:
Chemical representations contain enormous amounts of implicit information that is commonly taken for granted during the course of instruction. Students commonly lack a meaningful understanding of external chemical representations and fail to utilize them appropriately. The inability of students to identify, construct, and utilize these representations is a complex phenomenon. This presentation will describe attempts to characterize students’ perceptions of canonical external representations in chemistry. Using various survey instruments, students were asked to assign significance to salient features of various chemistry representations, including structural formulas and titration plots. Qualitative analysis of responses indicate that, rather than suffering from faulty prior knowledge (misconceptions), students may be employing inappropriate models and knowledge (negative transfer) to inform their perceptions of these representations. This failure to perceive can be attributed to students’ tendencies to see what they already know or have already learned while excluding that which they have not learned. In light of this disconnect, it is suggested that perceptual learning theory may be useful in reconsidering the explicitness and transparency of these chemical representations.
Dr. Thomas Kim, Associate Professor of Biochemistry, Rochester Institute of Technology
Thursday, October 17th, 4 p.m.
Minard Hall Room 116
CiDER collaborative research hits prime time
Two publications resulting from collaborative efforts of CiDER faculty and students appeared in back-to-back issues of CBE-Life Sciences Education. Check them out!
Using assessments to investigate and compare the nature of learning in undergraduate science courses
Stereotyped: Investigating gender in introductory science courses
Offerdahl publishes chapter on scientific literacy
Offerdahl's chapter entitled, "A Scientiically-minded Citzenry: The Ethical Responsibility of All Scientists" will reach the presses January 2013 in Encountering Life in the Universe: Ethical Foundations and Issues and Social Implications edited by Chris Impey, Anna Spitz, and William R. Stoeger.
Dr. Erika Offerdahl gives invited seminar
Dr. Erika Offerdahl will present results from her collaborative project focusing on visualization in the molecular life sciences at Purdue University September 19th 2012. Her talk, entitled "Do you see what I see? A pilot analysis of textbook representations in the molecular life sciences" will begin at 4:30 p.m. in WTHR 201 for the Chemical Education Seminar. Special thanks to her host, Professor Trevor Anderson!
Drs. Christensen and Momsen receive NSF grant for REU in STEM education
NSF has funded STEM education faculty at NDSU to develop and implement an undergraduate research experience in STEM education. Over the course of three summers, this program will engage 30 undergraduate students from across the nation in cutting-edge, collaborative, interdisciplinary research investigating learning in STEM disciplines. Students will partner with STEM education faculty, including PI Christensen, Co-PI Momsen, Erika Offerdahl (Chemistry & Biochemistry), Lisa Montplaisir (Biological Sciences), Mily Kryjevskaia (Physics), and William Martin (Mathematics and School of Education). NDSU has emerged as a leader in discipline-based education research at the undergraduate level, creating an ideal location for this REU site.
