Date: Friday May 1, 2026 | 1-2pm
Location: Terasaki Life Sciences 5100
Guest Speaker: Kirsten Turlo, Ph.D. Lecturer | UCLA Biomedical Research Minor
Teaching over time means adapting your curriculum to innovations in science, but also adjusting to changes in students’ knowledge base, information access and our cultural values. Many of us are seeing shortened attention spans and divided obligations. In my talk I will share some of my latest tools used to engage students, teach concepts, facilitate peer driven learning, incorporate AI and create tools students can use throughout their undergraduate careers. I use cheap scalable hands-on activities with open ended responses, to enable students to see the diversity of responses to a simple question. I’ve adapted Hoskins (2007) CREATE into a group compare and contrast exercise, challenging students to discuss similarities and differences between works. With these skills, they examine AI summaries of research we’ve discussed, identifying significant omitted details and describing novel caveats. I hope you’ll join me in this presentation of evolving curriculum and that you might share some of your classroom challenges and tools.