The oft written about think pair share strategy is perhaps the simplest way for instructors coming from a traditional lecture approach to give all students in a classroom opportunities to think about and talk about biology (Lyman, 1981; Chi et al., 1994; Allen and Tanner, 2002; Smith et al., 2009; Tanner, 2009).
Significant re-working of the text design makes this edition more readable for students, increasing the digestibility of the text whilst also forming a clean and effective mode of delivering the material which is more flexible for instructors to teach from.
Regarding fostering informal learning amongst instructors, our findings show that three chairs in our study enacted leadership for learning by expanding existing opportunities for instructors to learn from each other.
They also valued, encouraged, and accommodated instructor employment or service in the field (trade/profession) and four of the five chairs expanded existing opportunities for instructors to learn from each other.
This Mid-Semester Feedback tool provides another mechanism for instructors to collect feedback from students.
Those who want this to pass are, for the most part, the same ones who are pushing efforts to bring in Teach for America and instructors from non-traditional areas, indicating that teacher training is unnecessary and that anyone can step into a classroom and succeed.
In three departments, chairs expanded opportunities for instructors to collaborate and learn from each other either by creating space in the teaching schedule for meetings, by encouraging learning communities, or by promoting mentoring of new instructors.
The TILT website has some excellent suggestions and resources for instructors, including examples of assignments from various disciplines presented in two versions, less transparent and more transparent, for comparison.
The take-away from this result for instructors is that active learning in the classroom is perceived to be learning effective and likeable by the students themselves, irrespective of prior exposure to active learning.
We foresee that this article will be used by researchers to design instruments that measure fidelity of implementation of PI, professionals involved in professional development to provide them with resources for their sessions, and instructors from multiple STEM disciplines interested in implementing this practice.
