Pedagogic council

Eva Svärdemo Åberg and Christine Storr from CeUL's Digital Examination Team gave a seminar on about how we can think about examination in relation to AI, with an emphasis on oral examination. They emphasised the value of using several low-stake assessments instead of one high-stake exam. This allows teachers to use separate assessments for different types of knowledge, and can provide students with alternative ways to demonstrate their skills and knowledge. In such a set-up, oral examination could be one of several assessments on the course. We were shown pros and cons with oral examination and examples of how such an assessment can be organised.

CeUL presentation on oral examination pdf, 2.2 MB. (2211 Kb)

Andreas provided an overview of what generative AI is and how such tools can be used by teachers and students to enhance learning. He gave concrete examples of “prompt engineering”, that is how to effectively tailor the prompt given to the AI chatbot in order to get useful results.
Here you can find a link to the slides from the presentation, and to a recording of the presentation itself.

Presented by Emily Baird

Textbooks in teaching pdf, 64 kB. (64 Kb)

We agreed first of all that the textbook is or should be an important part of the course, especially on the more basic courses. On more advanced courses, focus will instead increasingly shift to other types of texts, such as scientific articles. But to successfully be able to read and digest a scientific article, students  need training with extracting relevant information from large amounts of text. Textbooks can be very useful for developing this skill.

We also discussed if we could make it easier to acquire the textbook, such as a book fair to sell used books. On the other hand, if students do not feel the textbook is relevant or necessary then it won’t matter how easy we make it for them to get it. We also need to ensure that the book is relevant and necessary in the courses.

Could we improve the possibility of students buying and using textbooks if we used the same book across courses?

A common textbook for all basic courses would probably have large benefits for the students: it would bring the cost of literature down, they would learn and familiarise themselves with the writing style and structure of the book, and it would be easier to incentivise the use of online resources and tools for this particular book. However, it has proved difficult in the past to make teachers agree on a book, and it would probably still be so. If it is to be successful, we as teachers need to accept that the book may not be able to provide all teaching material, but perhaps also that we shouldn’t set the bar too high. It is better that students learn the basics well, than having them skim through a lot of information that they later cannot remember.

Do we create our examinations in a way that textbook reading is required?

Apparently, we are not very good at this, at least that seems to be the opinion of the students. Here is an obvious room for improvement!

What can we do to facilitate or encourage students to use textbooks?

Emily gave some examples in her presentation that can be found in her slides. Apart from this, examples that came up in the discussion were: create study questions from the book (or borrow them from the book’s resources) and go through them with the students, have quizzes on the course book (these may or may not contribute to the grade, but should be mandatory), and make the book relevant by organising exercises around the content.

Remember that this is a fast moving technology, and the most important advice is probably to try to stay informed.

See also guidelines and advice on the SU Staff pages

Should we be seriously worried about the rise of AI bots, or is the risk overblown?

• We need to consider this, we need to test the tools ourselves, and we need to do it now. Students are already using the tools and they are constantly evolving.
• We will probably see a period of probing and testing, before we – perhaps – can settle into a situation similar to what happened with the pocket calculator, computers, spell check …
• Students will often be cheating themselves by using the tools, but we must also maintain integrity of having a degree.

Should we abandon essays/home exams, and if so, how can we examine the types of skills that we typically use them for?

• Mix different examination forms – at least don’t use *only* home exams
• More oral exams
• Ask for graphical abstracts (not currently possible)
• Ask for a process description – describe what they did, show search terms, outline
• Make use of GPTZero or similar tools

Should we talk about this with the students? If so, how?

• Yes absolutely.
• We need to emphasise the need to be critical. The bots have no transparency and the output is not always reliable.
• Important to understand that the AI does not “know” or “understand” anything. It is just predictive text generation based on tons of data.
• Talk to them as we do regarding plagiarism. What is accepted and what is not? This may need to be course-specific.
• We need to convey to students that they learn to think by writing (we often only realise what is missing from our understanding when we start writing it up)

Can you think of any positive ways of using AI bots in teaching, either as a teacher or as part of the learning experience for the students?

• May be useful for students with learning challenges tex, dyslexia
• Summarising long texts
• Proofreading
• Exercises that compare output of bots
• Help students to write and de-bug code
• Help find references (not yet, but maybe soon)

On a warm summer day in June, a number of teachers, administrators, students and BIG alumni gathered together on the beautiful roof-top premises of BeeUrban. The theme for this year’s teacher retreat was “how to help our students succeed with their future careers”. I think all participants agreed that it was a successful event with many interesting and stimulating discussions!
The day was divided into three parts:
First, a presentation on how and what we are doing now, including how well our students do in the workplace. This was followed by a panel discussion with alumni on their experiences of the transition to work life. Finally, we had a brainstorming session on what we can do to be better at assisting our students in preparing for a life after the studies.
The most prominent take-home message from the first session was that our students actually do very well after their degree from BIG. Career opportunities are good, but since we don’t give vocational educations, it can still be challenging for students to find their way in the work place.
The alumni also emphasised this; it may take some time to find a suitable job, partly because it can take time to understand what jobs are out there for you to apply for. Alumni also highlighted the value of practical work and “soft skills” on the job market. Labs and field courses were highly appreciated as they provided hands-on experience that you cannot acquire from books alone. However, they meant that these activities are not valued enough in courses, as they are typically only graded as pass/fail, if at all graded. Uncertainty about how well they mastered such skills can easily lead to an “imposter syndrome” when trying to enter the workplace, something that all alumni present had experienced. Another common observation was that they lacked experience with project management. This may not be something that we at BIG have competency in, but we may encourage students to include such courses in their degree as optional courses.
During the brainstorming session, we first emphasised that BIG and SU already offer a number of activities to help with transition to work life, such as the courses Biologists in society (Bachelor level) and Biologists in work life (Master level), and the Career Fair. These could be better integrated into the rest of the education though, to make them feel more relevant to the students. Teachers should consider ways to provide more feedback (formative or summative) on practical skills. Since our programs are largely theoretical, most courses (and teachers) are not able to provide concrete workplace-related activities, but It was also clear that students appreciated courses that did.
Finally, another outcome of the discussions is that we are now in the process of starting up alumni networks for our master programs, starting with Ecology and Biodiversity as a pilot.
All in all a very interesting and rewarding day, and it was nice to see so much engagement and enthusiasm, not the least from the invited alumni!

We discussed how course content corresponds to the learning outcomes and the grading criteria, and if the grading criteria provide any help with the examination. We were divided into 5 groups and provided with Syllabuses and Grading criteria for a course. The instructions were then to read through the learning outcomes for the course and the program, as well as the grading criteria and to discuss:

• Do these match what is actually taught in the course? Are they too few or too many? Too vague or too detailed?
• Are all learning outcomes examined? How do you ensure that they are?
• Do the grading criteria give any guidance for teaching and examination? Do they help students to understand what is expected from them?
• Do the grading criteria and examination differentiate between levels of cognitive complexity (e.g. Bloom’s taxonomy)?
• Do you feel that the learning outcomes need to be updated?
• Suggest an area of improvement

Organismal diversity - evolutionary theory, botany, zoology

• Grading criteria  - are using %
• Learning criteria vague
• No guidance from grading criteria on what to know

Improvement: Align the grading criteria

Physiology - plant and animal

• Examination - Duggor and then written exam
• Ongoing discussions on future of the course
• Quizz on Athena engages students

Improvement: Reducing the amount of lectures, adding discussions

Cell and molecular biology (30 credits)

Improvements: include statistics and evolution

More exams, one per intended learning outcome

• Sustainability science

• Compulsory seminars, pass/fail
• Essay in 7 sections
• Learning outcomes broadly framed

Improvement: incorporate journal reading into exam

Molecular genetics

• Learning outcomes: concrete, but too many? Practical part not included
• Grading criteria detailed, qualitative
• How to construct an exam that meets the criteria?
• Difficult to implement exam based on qualitative criteria on a course with many teachers.