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Growing Innovation and Collaboration Through Assessment and Feedback: A Toolkit for Assessing and Develo** Students’ Soft Skills in Biological Experimentation

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Trends in Teaching Experimentation in the Life Sciences

Part of the book series: Contributions from Biology Education Research ((CBER))

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Abstract

Skills in innovation and collaboration are critical in research and professional settings. These skills can be enhanced through consistent feedback. Herein, we demonstrate a toolkit used to assess skills in innovation, creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking. The toolkit includes surveys, semi-structured interview questions, and feedback reflection questions. In an innovation challenge setting and used in conjunction with critical feedback, this toolkit measured perceptions of growth in soft skills. This toolkit can be modified for different educational settings, including biological experimentation, where the development of such skills will enhance the impact of the process and potentially the direction of the experiment. Overall, future use of this toolkit may give educators more insight into student inclination for innovation and growth of important skill sets over time.

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Acknowledgments

We were able to pilot our toolkit with the Presidential Clinical Innovation Summer Fellowship program, which was funded by the Office of the President at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. We would like to thank the students that participated in the program and provided feedback about the implementation of the toolkit. The protocol was reviewed and approved by UAB’s Institutional Review Board (protocol #060619003). SMB was supported by the UAB Mentored Experiences in Research, Instruction, and Teaching program, which is funded by a National Institutes for Health grant, GM088010.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Birmingham-Southern College, Birmingham, AL, USA

    Sarah M. Beno

  2. UAB Honors College and Department of Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

    Diane C. Tucker

Authors
  1. Sarah M. Beno
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  2. Diane C. Tucker
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Correspondence to Sarah M. Beno .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Biology Education Area, Department of Biological Sciences, Purdue University West Lafayette, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Nancy J. Pelaez

  2. Biology Education Area, Department of Biological Sciences, Purdue University West Lafayette, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Stephanie M. Gardner

  3. Divisions of Chemical Education and Biochemistry, Department of Chemistry, Purdue University West Lafayette, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Trevor R. Anderson

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Beno, S.M., Tucker, D.C. (2022). Growing Innovation and Collaboration Through Assessment and Feedback: A Toolkit for Assessing and Develo** Students’ Soft Skills in Biological Experimentation. In: Pelaez, N.J., Gardner, S.M., Anderson, T.R. (eds) Trends in Teaching Experimentation in the Life Sciences. Contributions from Biology Education Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98592-9_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98592-9_20

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-98591-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-98592-9

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