As we all know, by making our course content more relevant – to our daily lives, to our local communities, to the global society, or to pop culture – students are able to connect to the course material more easily and thus get more engaged in the learning process. In this spirit, the National Center for Case Study Teaching in the Sciences offers almost 1,000 case studies in a variety of STEM disciplines that explicitly make the connection between real-world issues and the scientific content that is being taught. You can find some on human health and disease, environmental disasters, athletes and sports, bread baking, and a fight between a scorpion and a mouse (spoiler alert: the mouse wins). Case studies such as these can be applied to typical lecture courses, but what about lab courses? Ideally, lab experiments in biology, chemistry, and physics have some connection or relevance to the real world, but oftentimes these labs are “cookbook” in style and just give the facts of the experiment without making the experiment click with the students. After having taught human anatomy and introductory biology labs for 10 years, I have seen a variety of labs in both buckets. However, this summer in May 2023, I have the opportunity to create an extremely relevant and connected lab experience for students here at the Colorado School of Mines. We have a brand-new, fast-growing major on campus, Quantitative Biosciences and Engineering (QBE), which is similar to a typical four-year biology degree in biological concepts but then we kick it up a notch by requiring math up through and including differential equations, data analytics and programming with Python, and entrepreneurship. Another unique feature of our program is our summer field session course, which is a three-week, 40+ hour a week lab-based course that simulates a real-world work experience.   Our Plan for Creating a Timely, Relevant, and Engaging Lab Course With relevance in mind, my co-instructor John Spear and I are going to use the theme of plastic waste to introduce our students to laboratory methods and data analysis skills. Plastic waste is a major problem and traditional recycling efforts often fall short, so we need to think of new ways to tackle plastic waste and recycling. In this course, we are going to explore two biological approaches that have promise to address this global issue. First, our students will collect environmental soil and water samples from a mine in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and will be using genomic sequencing methods to explore bacterial species which might be able to “munch” on plastic. Second, with the help of Gregg Beckham at the National Renewable Energy Lab, our students will be designing and producing mutant recombinant enzymes in an attempt to engineer them to be more effective at degrading plastics. Both of these projects are real-world applications of students’ biological and technical skill sets, and both directly relate to the plastic waste issue that the world is facing. But we need to do more than just make the connection between the course content and a global issue. We need to have students talk about it and share it with the tools that they are used to using. To do this, over the course of the three weeks, students will take pictures, record videos, and interview themselves and each other (think of a super nerdy biotech version of the hit sitcom The Office) and stitch these together into a brief 4 to 5-minute video that they can share with the social media network of their choice. Full disclosure: I don’t have a TikTok account, nor do I want one, so the students are on their own if they decide to post there. There are only two rules with this assignment: have fun and no PowerPoint!   Relevance They Can Use to Communicate with Family, Friends, and Future Students Not only will the students be taking videos of their lab experience, but most likely when they are walking around campus or near our local creek, they will spot a plastic bottle or two on the ground that they can record and comment on. This assignment will give students an opportunity to document their lab experience in an accessible way and will allow them to share with their family and friends what kept them so darn busy for three weeks in the summer. The videos will also give us, from the program-perspective, a wonderful resource to share with future QBE students and to use for outreach to attract new students into our program. This is just one specific example of bringing explicit relevance to a biology laboratory course, but there are many ways to bring relevance to any course that you might be teaching. One simple way to do this is to search the news for some key words from a given lesson in your course and to see what stories are out there that tie into what you are going to be teaching. Or, you could consider using resources such as the National Center for Case Study Teaching in the Sciences that I mentioned above as a way to get inspired and to download actual lesson plans and materials that you can directly use in your course. In another more involved approach, you may be able to reach out to local companies, non-profits, or government organizations to explore potential tie-ins to your course material. No matter what approach you take, it is worth the time to add more relevance to your courses. Not only will students be more engaged, but you as an instructor will be engaged and refreshed, as I can certainly attest to. You’ll have more fun, as will your students, and I bet you’ll learn some new things too.   Justin Shaffer is a Teaching Associate Professor in Quantitative Biosciences and Engineering and Chemical and Biological Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. He is also the founder of Recombinant Education where he provides professional development on course design and evidence-based teaching strategies for faculty, postdocs, and graduate students. ... View more

The Teaching Assistant, or the TA, is a vital part of the educational experience at universities across the country. They play a key role in helping to educate students, offering aid to the professor in constructing a successful and positive learning environment. We decided to take a closer look at this role, asking how the TA can differ from institution to institution and how this specifically applies to labs. Lexi Wachtell is a Biology Labs Teaching and Learning Strategist at Macmillan Learning. Prior to joining Macmillan Learning, she spent several years teaching introductory biology labs at the University of Washington, as well as conducting biology education research with Dr. Scott Freeman. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Washington, where she studied Environmental Science & Terrestrial Resource Management and Marine Biology. We asked Lexi to answer a couple of questions on how the lab space utilizes TAs and how we can support them so they can continue to provide a significant contribution to labs. 1. What is the contribution/difference Teaching Assistants make in a lab program? To put it simply, lab programs wouldn’t be possible without TAs! TAs are typically in charge of teaching hands-on labs, grading (lab reports, exams, etc.), and providing personalized instruction and feedback to students in a smaller setting. In large courses, TAs can also make a huge difference in students’ sense of belonging in STEM disciplines (which is important because research shows that sense of belonging is critical to students retention in STEM fields). So TAs play a crucial role in lab programs and lab-based courses! 2. How does the Teaching Assistant role differ at institutions across the country?   Broadly speaking, there are a lot of similarities among Teaching Assistant roles across institutions - most TAs will be teaching, holding office hours, and grading assignments. Things that differ are the amount of time allotted toward each category - so TAs at one institution may teach 1 or 2 lab sections each term, while TAs at another institution may teach 3 or 4 lab sections per term. Time spent grading also differs because some courses will use multiple-choice question exams and scantrons (which are very fast to grade or auto-graded), while others will rely solely on open-ended free-response questions (which are very time-consuming to grade). Likewise, some TAs may be in charge of maintaining the course website, from updating content and assignments to handling the grade book. Other TAs may not do this at all, and the course website maintenance will be done by the professor or another staff member. Even within a single institution, the role and workload for TAs in different departments can vary pretty substantially - so a TA’s role in the Chemistry department can be pretty different than a TA’s role in the Biology department.   3. What kind of tasks or activities might a TA be responsible for in a standard day of lab? TAs set up and clean the lab space, take attendance, teach lab, help run experiments, hold office hours to answer questions (related to lab or lecture content), and grade lab reports. TAs also act as the first line of defense to identify students who are struggling or at-risk and often provide support to students who need help (such as helping students who are struggling, either in the TA’s classroom or with college in general). This is especially common in introductory courses with lots of first-year students, as first-years may not have formed a support system yet - TAs in intro courses have more face-to-face time with students, so it is common for them to take on this support role in addition to their other duties.   4. What kind of technology do you see TAs using in the lab currently? How does it help them? TAs will sometimes use computers for presentations/lab instructions, or excel and statistics software if the lab requires data entry and analysis. However, there are a lot of labs where computers and other technology are not allowed on the lab bench due to possible exposure to chemicals, spills, and other hazards.    5. How else can we support the Teaching Assistant role and save them time on those tasks so they can provide a more significant contribution to the lab? One of the first things that come to mind is grading because it can be pretty time-consuming - anything we can do to make grading faster makes a big difference. So would features that would allow TAs to grade lab reports electronically (such as adding comments/specific feedback along with point values). The amount of time spent grading is important because typically TAs are graduate students who are contracted to work for the university for a set number of hours each week. The more time they spend grading, the less time they have for teaching and interacting with students.   TAs are extremely important in the lab space. They play a crucial role in lab programs and lab-based courses. They help with so many different aspects of the educational experience, from teaching hands-on labs to providing personalized instruction and feedback to students. To put it simply, these programs wouldn’t function properly without the TA to help out. So don’t forget to show some appreciation for your TAs!    ... View more