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Enhancing Learning Through Creative Illustrations

Apr 13, 2024

2 min read

In the world of education, creating engaging learning environments is key to fostering a dynamic and interactive classroom setting. As educators, our role extends beyond just disseminating information – we must also strive to make the learning process exciting and stimulating for our students. So, how can we create learning environments that captivate and inspire? Here is one way to achieve that!



Tech implementation #1:


Biorender


What is BioRender?

BioRender is scientific illustrating software that is completely free of charge. It is used by a large number of researchers from undergraduates to professors for creating diagrammatic representations of their experiments, research, and studies. The reason why BioRender is widely used is because it has a huge library of scientific templates, which researchers can utilize to create scientific figures with ease. The website claims to have over 50,000 icons and templates from over 30 fields of life science. Users can create a free account and make up to 5 illustrations.


How would it benefit students?

There are around 25 experiments for BIOL-251, and remembering the concepts of each of the experiments can be challenging. One thing I would like to implement is creating a scientific illustration as a group assignment after each practical. The benefits of this assignment would be that it can help students review and reinforce what they have learned or understood during practical’s. It can enhance their creativity and imagination by allowing them to express their ideas and interpretations in a different medium. It can increase their engagement and interest in the subject by making it more fun and interactive. It can facilitate collaborative and cooperative learning and foster critical thinking to some extent.


Implementation

We can assign creating a scientific illustration as a group assignment post-practical, which can be due the next weekend. Every member of the group should contribute something to making the illustration, which should be documented. The TAs should be responsible for critically reviewing their illustration and providing constructive feedback before submission. Students can share their illustrations with a friend or colleague on BioRender to collaborate in preparing their illustrations.


Assessment

We can assess the assignment by creating a rubric, where points should be allotted based on accuracy, clarity, creativity, and presentation.

Furthermore, we can assess the impact of this assignment on their retention and comprehension of a concept by including a practical question in the theoretical examination which is directly related to the topic of scientific illustration created by the students. By tallying the number of students who provided the correct response, we can assess the overall level of retention and conceptual clarity of the concept within the entire class.



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