Some thoughts on undergraduate teaching and the Ph.D.

I took up my present appointment at St. George's Hospital Medical School in 1967 and found myself with friendly colleagues and a tradition of undergraduate teaching of psychiatry extending back to the immediate post-war period. This tradition had also been expressed in the textbook Psychological Medicine, written and revised over successive years by Guttman, Curran and Partridge, and in more recent years by Peter Storey, currently a senior colleague here. The book is hallmarked by its clarity of expression and the richness of its clinical observation, and has for long been a favourite with both undergraduates and postgraduates.

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Continuous Flow Science in an Undergraduate Teaching Laboratory: Synthesis of Ethylene Glycol Diacetate Using Heterogeneous Catalysts in Continuous Flow

Journal of Chemical Education ◽

10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c01226 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Maolin Sun ◽

Chaoming Liang ◽

Xinyuan Shen ◽

Jianchang Li ◽

Ruihua Cheng ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Ethylene Glycol ◽

Continuous Flow ◽

Heterogeneous Catalysts ◽

Undergraduate Teaching ◽

Teaching Laboratory ◽

Laboratory Synthesis

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136 Reflections on the foundational scientific knowledge of undergraduate animal science students: a three-year study

Journal of Animal Science ◽

10.1093/jas/skz053.180 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 97 (Supplement_1) ◽

pp. 79-79

Author(s):

Lauren R Thomas ◽

Jeremy G Powell ◽

Elizabeth B Kegley ◽

Kathleen Jogan

Keyword(s):

Student Performance ◽

Scientific Knowledge ◽

Assessment Tool ◽

Undergraduate Teaching ◽

Experimental Unit ◽

Student Knowledge ◽

Animal Science ◽

Muscle Foods ◽

Assessment Scores ◽

Percentage Points

Abstract In 2015, the University of Arkansas Department of Animal Science developed a strategy for assessing student-learning outcomes within its undergraduate teaching program. The first recognized outcome states that students will demonstrate foundational scientific knowledge in the general animal science disciplines of physiology, genetics, nutrition, muscle foods, and production animal management. Subsequently, a 58-item assessment tool was developed for direct assessment of student knowledge—focusing primarily on freshmen and senior students. Over the past 3 academic calendar years, 381 students (196 freshmen, 48 sophomores, 19 juniors, 113 seniors, 5 graduates) were assessed, either during an introduction to animal science course or by appointment with outgoing seniors majoring in animal science. Scores were categorized using demographic data collected at the beginning of the assessment tool. Comparison categories included academic class, major, and general student background (rural or urban). Data analysis were performed using the Glimmix procedure of SAS, with student serving as the experimental unit and significance set at P ≤ 0.05. Generally speaking, animal science majors performed better (P < 0.01) than students from other majors, and students with a rural background performed better (P < 0.01) than their urban-backgrounded peers. Overall, senior assessment scores averaged 23-percentage points greater (P < 0.01) than freshmen assessment scores, and the average scores for freshmen and seniors were 43% and 66% respectively. In regards to student performance within each discipline, there was an average improvement of 24 percentage points between freshmen and seniors in all of the measured disciplines except for muscle foods, which only saw a 10-percentage point improvement between the two classes. While the overall improvement in scores is indicative of increased student knowledge, the department would like to see greater improvement in all discipline scores for seniors majoring in animal science.

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