Advancing Graduate Education and Faculty Development with Discipline Based Education Research and the SIMPLE Framework: Design Memos in Biology for Active Teaching

With the increasing popularity of active teaching methods, universities have become more interested in changing instruction from direct lecture to interactive engagement. The George Mason University (Mason, Virginia, USA) Biology Department is achieving this goal through: 1) faculty participation in the SIMPLE project; 2) faculty and student involvement in Discipline-Based Education Research projects; 3) participating in the Learning Assistant program for undergraduate students as scholars; and 4) the Accelerator Program. These approaches are discussed in this paper. Also, interactive teaching strategies, which the biology faculty and graduate teaching assistants use at Mason, are documented in the form of design memos; these memos are introduced in this paper.