I enjoy writing lesson plans for undergraduate courses, particularly at the introductory level. My lesson plans are usually built in the 5E model and use engaging pre-class activities, active learning exercises, group work and discussions, and formative assessments. To date, I have focused on ecology and introductory biology topics.

The 5E Model

Engage - Pre-class activities relate the upcoming class topic to a real-world problem and encourage students to identify personal sources of motivation.
Explore - Student discussions of the engagement activity help them explore different perspectives.
Explain - Students practice communicating and synthesizing what they have learned.
Elaborate - Students and instructor collaborate to extend and connect the new knowledge to other contexts, applications, and exceptions.
Evaluate - Students and instructor determine how much learning and understanding has been achieved.

Some/all of these steps are repeated as needed.

Active Learning Strategies

Group work - Group work during lectures fosters students collaboration and communication of ideas while reducing the grading load on the instructor. Further, it helps students practice working with others, a critical life skill.
Inquiry-based learning - I believe that students learn best when they are provided with a real-world motivation and context for course material and the opportunity to employ the mental disciplines required for the field of study. This approach is particularly suited to biology.
Formative assessments - Students practice applying their new knowledge and use appropriate problem-solving techniques. This improves retention of core principles and ensures students are given a fair chance to succeed, as practice sessions are aligned with summative assessments.

Lesson Plans

Ecological systems:
​How pairwise interactions can indirectly affect complex
ecosystems
Download Lesson, Download Slides

This lecture focuses on ecological systems and how some species interactions may be impacted by other pairwise species interactions through changes to the abiotic environment. It draws on primary literature to highlight the role of symbiotic bacteria in regulating availability of abiotic nutrients in plant competition. The focal paper provides a simple, approachable framework from which to discuss how ecological systems are a complex network of biotic and abiotic factors, without excessive explanation or details. The lesson includes an outline of the class activity and a suggested exam question.

PCR: 
Manipulation of DNA replication for research & real-world problems​
Download Lesson

In this lab, students will learn:
  1. fundamental principles of PCR
  2. how to perform PCR
  3. what components are required and why they are necessary
  4. how to model the steps of PCR
  5. how PCR is applied in biological research & real-world problems. ​
​This lab is meant to be the start of a series of DNA-based labs and could lead into restriction digests, barcode sequencing, cloning, or other labs based on the PCR product.

Using these Lesson Plans
These lesson plans have yet to be implemented in a class. If you have the opportunity to do so, please 1) let me know in advance, 2) credit me for the materials you use, and 3) let me know how it went! I would be delighted to get some feedback and improve the lesson plan based on instructor and student feedback. I'd also be happy to help tweak the lesson for your class and format specific student evaluation prompts.