Description of Program:

The Biology Department at the University of Virginia has taken an integrated approach to help prepare graduate students for future academic careers. One component of the program involves the comprehensive training of teaching assistants as teachers, while the other focuses on improving technical writing and scientific presentation skills. To introduce and foster effective teaching strategies, teaching assistants attend inter- and intra-departmental teaching workshops and prepare and deliver mock lectures prior to the first semester they teach. Teaching assistants are also videotaped during one of their actual laboratory sections. The mock lectures and videotaping rely heavily on self-, peer-, and mentor-evaluation as feedback mechanisms. To develop good writing and presentation skills, students take a semester-long course, covering a variety of topics, such as what makes a good seminar, how to present data and figures, how to search and review the literature, and how to write a scientific paper. As part of the course, students present short research talks to their peers and to the Biology Department, they critique their peers’ presentations as well as speakers at Departmental seminars, and they write drafts of their research findings. This facet of the program also depends on self-, peer-, and mentor-evaluation, which provides a means to objectively determine presentation and writing effectiveness and to suggest areas of improvement.

The time investment for the biology graduate students includes:
1. attending a two-day comprehensive teaching workshop sponsored by the Teaching Resource Center,
2. attending a half-day comprehensive laboratory teaching workshop sponsored by the Biology Department,
3. preparing and delivering a mock lecture,
4. attending and participating in a semester-long course on Scientific Presentation and Papers which meets weekly for an hour,
5. attending and critiquing departmental seminars (minimum of 5 per semester).

Program Outcomes:

Approximately 120 biology graduate students have participated in the teaching training program over a 10 year period. The students participating in this particular aspect of the training program are generally first or second year students. While no quantitative data exists on the impact of the program, evaluations from students who have completed the program are favorable. Evaluation of biology TAs by students in Biology 204 provides the best evidence for the success of the program. Recent evaluation of 297 students showed that on a six question questionnaire 95% of the responses were “excellent” or “good” and only 0.004% were “bad.” In addition, 94% of the comments were positive while only 6% were negative.

The presentation and writing component of the Biology Graduate Student Training program has been in existence for four years. All biology graduate students are required to take the course in their first year. No quantitative data has been recorded documenting the success of the course; however, anecdotal evidence from the students, like the following quote, attests to the program’s success.
“…I learned how to present my data for all to understand. Science must be conveyed to others. For this reason, it is extremely important for all scientists to present their data in a clear and concise manner. This is the goal of this course. It [was] extremely useful and I know that I will use the methods learned in this class throughout my career.”
Faculty members have also commented on the dramatic improvement of the required, end-of-year, departmental seminars given by graduate students.

Program Implementation:

The teaching component of the Biology Graduate Student Training program requires collaboration with the Teaching Resource Center for the two-day teaching workshop, coordination and implementation of the departmental workshop, as well as coordination of the mock lectures, videotaping, and consultations. The department workshop is a half-day long, requiring a faculty or staff presenter. The mock lectures take approximately 10-15 minutes per student, requiring a small panel of faculty, staff, or other graduate students to evaluate the lecture. The Teaching Resource Center assists the Biology Department with the videotaping of TAs and subsequent consultation. The videotaping takes one hour per student, with another hour allotted for the consultation.

Training in scientific presentation and writing is achieved through a one credit course requiring a faculty member to prepare a course syllabus and approximately 14 lectures/discussions which cover aspects such as literature research, presenting data and figures, and scientific writing. Much of the course development occurs prior to the beginning of the semester. Selection of appropriate reading material for each discussion period is one particularly important and time consuming aspect of course design. Additionally, individual student conferences require approximately two hours per student per semester.