If you're teaching biology for non-majors this fall, you might be asking: What actually helps students retain what they’ve learned? This summer, Dr. Peggy Brickman is revising her course based on findings from a recent multi-institutional study on long-term learning in introductory biology (Brickman et al., 2024). The study revealed that while students often succeed on exams, they struggle to retain key concepts over time—especially when assessments emphasize recall over reasoning. In this informal webinar, Peggy will share how she’s restructuring content and assessments to focus on concepts that endure, using strategies like spaced retrieval, concept application, and durable learning targets.
She’s also eager to hear from you—what’s working in your course, what’s not, and what you’re thinking about changing.
Erin Vinson, Education Support Specialist for Codon Learning, will follow up by demonstrating how Codon’s Biology for Real Life can help your students to actively engage in rounds of self testing while developing their metacognitive skills.
Can’t attend live? No problem! Register anyway, and we’ll send you the recording to watch at your convenience. This event will be at 1 p.m. Eastern.
Dr. Peggy Brickman is a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor in Plant Biology at the University of Georgia, where she has instructed almost 30,000 introductory biology students over the past 25 years, usually in sections of general education courses with more than 300 students. In addition to developing curriculum to enhance science literacy, she researches methods to enhance collaborative learning in college classrooms and labs. Over the past decade, she has mentored graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty as a National Academies Speaker and Facilitator. She is a course director at Codon Learning, developing curriculum for nonmajors biology alongside Dr. Cara Gormally.
Dr. Erin Vinson with a BS in Ecology and a MAT for Secondary Science Education, Erin has worked as Diversity Programs Coordinator for the Ecological Society of America, in the Adirondacks as an environmental educator with SUNY-ESF, and as coordinator for a dual enrollment program at Eastern Maine Community College. Most recently at UMaine, Erin worked with discipline-based education researchers, investigating and implementing data-driven professional learning for STEM instructors. She also coordinated the Learning Assistant program and was Managing Editor for the journal CourseSource.