Teaching Neuroscience: Innovative Approaches for Undergraduate Education

A special issue of Brain Sciences (ISSN 2076-3425). This special issue belongs to the section "Developmental Neuroscience".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 January 2020) | Viewed by 3951

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Neuroscience B.S. Program, Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40536-0509, United States
Interests: neuroscience education; drug and alcohol dependence; neuronal cell culture; biochemistry; microscopy; immunohistochemistry; brain imaging; behavioral neuroscience

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Guest Editor
Department of Psychology, Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Center, University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA
Interests: neuroscience education; pedagogy; drug dependence; central nervous system damage; biochemistry; learning and memory
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to contribute to Teaching Neuroscience: Innovative Approaches for Undergraduate Education, a Special Issue of Brain Sciences.

Neuroscience is growing globally, as an occupation and an educational discipline. Recent findings suggest that the impetus for this growth is due to students’ inherent interest in the brain and associated structures, as well as a recognition that neuroscience, being a multidisciplinary field of study, will provide students with a comprehensive foundation suited for subsequent graduate and professional studies. Teaching undergraduate students in this broad, interdisciplinary field can be challenging. Integrating instructional techniques from the natural and social sciences, encouraging scientific exploration, and engaging students in research requires careful consideration and a degree of creativity.

We invite theoretical, practical, and data-driven papers for this Special Issue of Brain Sciences that demonstrate innovative pedagogical practices employed in the teaching of neuroscience at the undergraduate level.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Teaching research methods in neuroscience
  • Engaging, hands-on activities
  • Study abroad courses
  • Internship experiences
  • Engaging students outside the classroom
  • Engaging students in the research laboratory setting
  • Bridging the gap in knowledge for students from different disciplines
  • Approaches to dispelling “neuromyths”
  • Incorporating cross-discipline teaching within a course

Dr. Lynda Sharrett
Dr. Mark Prendergast
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Brain Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • neuroscience pedagogy
  • education
  • active learning
  • problem-base learning
  • instrumentation
  • laboratories
  • evidence-base learning

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

33 pages, 1152 KiB  
Article
Asynchronous Delivery of a 400 Level, Partially Peer-Graded, Oral Presentation and Discussion Course in Systems Neuroscience for 60 Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic
by Jack Moffat, Charlotte Copas, Kate Wood and J. David Spafford
Brain Sci. 2021, 11(6), 693; https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11060693 - 25 May 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2941
Abstract
A 400-level undergraduate oral presentation and discussion course in Systems Neuroscience was delivered asynchronously online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Enrolled students banked their narrated oral presentations in video format online then engaged in peer evaluation in virtual classrooms through the course website. Student [...] Read more.
A 400-level undergraduate oral presentation and discussion course in Systems Neuroscience was delivered asynchronously online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Enrolled students banked their narrated oral presentations in video format online then engaged in peer evaluation in virtual classrooms through the course website. Student delivered their oral presentation and responded to peer questions at their leisure and convenience, without the stress and anxiety associated with a “live” performance delivery in front of their peers. A remote and asynchronously delivered course facilitated much more peer contact than “live” versions of the course, which included a total of 62 uploaded presentations, 301 video responses uploaded to 1985 questions posed by peers, a total of 1159 feedback questionnaires submitted, 1066 rankings submitted of viewed oral presentations, and 1091 scores submitted evaluating the quality of questions posed by reviewers of oral presentations. A major drawback in the remote, asynchronous deliver was the enormity of peer engagement through the course website portal, which was mostly blind to the instructor because of the inability to effectively cross-index data linked between the student entries in the LEARN course website and the uploaded videos stored within BONGO Video Assignment tool. Nonetheless, a consistent engagement of students, and the positive feedback from enrolled students, indicate that a future version of this oral/written discussion course will be delivered, in part, remotely and asynchronously, even without a mandated delivery of the course by a remote and asynchronous method due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in 2020–2021. Full article
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