What if undergraduate biology students did more than memorize textbooks?

What if, when undergraduates finished a degree in biology, they also gained the skills to foster patient-client trust? What if they had an appreciation for how active teaching can foster learning in medicine? What if they countered stereotypical perspectives of themselves and others as participants in the scientific enterprise?

Our research reimagines how we teach biology to build a generation of scientists and health practitioners that practice empathy, embodiment, and transdisciplinary thinking.

 
 

Major themes in our work

 

Empathic

Empathy occurs when our experienced or imagined emotion is similar to another’s emotion that is not our own . Our goal is to cultivate empathy as a necessary precursor to factors, such as instructor approachability and cultural relevancy, which support student learning and engagement in the sciences.

Embodied

We study how science learning can be shaped through physical, multisensorial experiences. Our goal is to improve student learning and engagement in physiology through embodied experiences such as gesturing, interactive media, and bodily activity in the classroom.

Expansive

Scientist stereotypes are still pervasive. We design and assess interventions that highlight counter-stereotypical and cross-cultural perspectives of scientists. Our goals are to challenge biases that impede equitable and inclusive engagement in science and to develop scientists for social justice.

Explore a few of our favorite projects:

 
 

Emotional Intelligence in Undergraduate Biology Education

Given the ups and downs of an undergraduate students’ experience, what if emotions were intentionally addressed and acknowledged in biology classrooms?

Ash Tea and Dax Ovid are collaborating on projects related to understanding emotion work, acknowledging feeling rules, and fostering emotional intelligence in undergraduate biology classrooms. This scholarship aims to highlight the emotional dimensions of life science education for instructors, for students, in classroom culture, and in curriculum.

 
 
 
 

Using Wearable Technology to Teach Physiology

What if we could learn physiology through understanding our own bodies as mediated by technologies?

Wearables are an increasingly common but still prohibitively costly mechanism to understand our own bodies. Jorge Ivan Rodriguez and Dax Ovid collaborate with UGA’s Engineering Capstone Project to develop affordable wearable technology that can be used to teach cardiovascular physiology to undergraduate students. This pilot project is generously funded by UGA’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) Learning Technology Grant (LTG).

 
 
 
 

Transforming Science Teaching through the Lens of the Theory of Performativity

Despite decades of research, professional development, and institutional incentives to support active learning, the vast majority of STEM courses are still predominantly taught with didactic lecture.

Michelle Wooten, Kimberly Tanner, and Dax Ovid collaborate on a study that considers socio-historical forces that shape scientist professional identity and potentially stagnates pedagogical innovation. The purpose of the study is to construct avenues to challenge these long-standing processes of scientist socialization - both gendered and racialized - through the lens of Judith Butler’s theory of performativity.

 

Why this work matters

We seek a rhythm of iterative social change that is responsive to the ever-evolving educational, personal, and professional needs of students and future generations of scientists.

Through opportunities for scholarly collaborations, invited talks, and custom workshops, the CORPUS Education team aims to ultimately shape how scientists teach, do research, and provide services to promote a more equitable society.