Diane O'Dowd, HHMI Professor

Teaching Activities

In our training, we emphasize that discussion section is a place where students need to interact with the lecture material, not hear it again as a lecture. With this in mind, we collect and format the activities created by our discussion leaders that might be particularly useful to future instructors. We have also modified several of our training activities to be used by individual TAs who wants to improve their general teaching skills.

Choose a link:

Teaching Activities for:

General Teaching skills

Bio 93 Introductory Biology
Bio 97 Sophomore Genetics
Bio 103 Junior-level Cell Biology

Teaching Lab (1202 NatSci I) Reservation Calendar

General Teaching:

• Create a teaching contact list
• Balancing Teaching and Research plus worksheets for meeting with your research advisor at the beginning, middle and end of the term.
• Prep for first day: Create a first day of class transcript
• First day: Syllabus scavenger hunt, Sample icebreakers
• Exam review: Exam review game and Exam Review Jeopardy Game
• Discover your own VARK learning style (and teach students to study using VARK)
• Dealing with anonymous student evaluations

For Introductory Biology:

Cell Membrane Structure (Group drawing project)
How to Study in Introductory Biology (Group fact gathering)
Outlining Lecture Notes (group study of lecture notes)
Concept Mapping (group study of lecture notes)
Gene Structure (Group drawing project)
Mitosis and Meiosis (Group worksheet)
Magnetic Chromosomes (Teacher demo with magnetic chromosomes)
Pipe-Cleaner Chromosomes (Group manipulation of models)

Transcription to Translation Scavenger Hunt (group acting out of process)
Action Potentials (Student demonstration)

"Science Fair" Poster presentations (any topics)

For Sophomore-level Genetics:

Diagramming a gene (group drawing project)
Outlining Lecture Notes (group study of lecture notes)
Prokaryotic vs. Eukaryotic Transcription and Translation (group worksheet)
Sequencing Nucleotides (group model-building)
DNA to Protein Practice (group worksheet)
Classic DNA Experiments (matching card activity)
Cloning a Gene (group concept mapping)
Genetic proceeses (group drawing project)
Narrating an Animation (group study of online animations)

For Junior-level Cell Biology:

First Week: Inner Life of a Cell (group study of animation)

"Inner Life of a Cell" video link: http://multimedia.mcb.harvard.edu/media.html

Music only version: http://www.studiodaily.com/main/technique/tprojects/6850.html

Cellular Processes (group drawing project)
Organizing complex topics (concept mapping)
Worksheet Activitiy (group problem-solving)
Narrating Cellular Animations (group study of animations)
Outlining Lecture Notes (group study of lecture notes)

The UCI Teaching, Learning and Technology Center has additional valuable resources.  Please visit them here: http://www.tltc.uci.edu/

Reservations for Teaching Lab: 1202 NatSci I: