The JMBE Live recording I watched today was Stanley Lo’s presentation on “A modified CREATE Intervention Improves Student Cognitive and Affective Outcomes.” Lo talked about his journey in biology education which includes a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, a postdoc in biochemistry, and a postdoc in learning sciences. Lo taught high school too! Lo is now an Associate Teaching Professor at UCSD. Sally Hoskins at the City College of New York developed the CREATE strategy. In the original strategy, students read three or four primary literature articles to dive into the questions, biology, methods, and technologies from this series of articles/studies. Students in the original CREATE strategy follow a series of studies from one or more labs, for example. The first version of CREATE was done in an upper division cell biology course. I appreciate that Lo explained the history and development of CREATE. Lo teaches genetics and wanted to adapt the CREATE strategy. CREATE, Lo explained, stands for: consider, read, elucidate hypotheses, analyze & interpret the data, think of the next experiment. On Lo’s campus, genetics is taught in multiple sections by multiple instructors, and his challenge was to include CREATE in a manageable way. For this, Lo created four different modules: one about DNA forensics to find elephant poachers, human diseases, biodiversity, and human diseases/genetics. The table lo presented from the 2020 JMBE publication listed numerous papers, though Lo mentioned he incorporated bits and pieces from each. Lo shared DART data: recordings of class session audio. During the CREATE portions of the class, the sound levels were uniformly higher decibel levels because more people were speaking at the same time. Lo explained that there were different activities during the sessions and therefore the term “modified CREATE” strategy was used. Lo shared data from the publication depicting concept inventory scores of different sections including the CREATE section. The effect size (ES) pre/post was greater for the CREATE section and, interestingly, student perceived learning was lower for the CREATE section. The first question from the audience was about the DART system and the software used to analyze the audio recordings. Lo explained that Kimberly Tanner’s group developed a website to analyze the data using machine learning. The classrooms used in Lo’s study had ceiling microphones to capture all audio, suitable for DART. This made me realize that I should figure out how to do this in our rooms! Lo then explained that he assigns figures from articles and concept maps before the sessions. Then, students synthesize a concept map together. The next question was about the level of the course and adaptation of this modified CREATE strategy. Lo said the genetics course they teach is about a 200-level course. The dozen or more sections of genetics do use a common textbook, Lo noted. Textbook readings are assigned for homework, and clicker questions are used during sessions. Lo answered a question from an attendee and explained that he does share the citation for the articles with students if they want to look it up. Lo talked about some apps that were designed at UCSD to group students and help promote productive discussions. After that, Lo and Rachel Horak answered a series of questions about JMBE and publishing biology education research. It was really useful to hear Lo’s study design and suggestions, as I didn’t realize he used DART!
