Course Developer

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SoundBio Lab seeks passionate volunteer Course Developers to help us create and pilot new Labs Skills Courses.

Course Developers will work with the assistance of the Education & Outreach Committee to develop course curricula and materials. They must also commit to teaching the 4-6 week (or session) course at least twice within a 12-month period. The ideal candidate is hoping to gain practical experience in teaching and curriculum design.

Requirements:

• Comprehensive understanding of general wet lab safety procedures.
• Expertise in the topic(s) covered in the course.
• Demonstrated proficiency in laboratory techniques taught in the course, or willingness to learn.
• Previous laboratory teaching or mentoring experience is highly desirable.
• Post-secondary education in biology, biochemistry, bioengineering, microbiology, or equivalent professional experience is highly preferred.

Commitment
10 hours per month during course development, then a maximum 4 hours per week during course delivery.

Who should apply?
We understand that part of how inequality is perpetuated in STEM is the lack of opportunities for education and career development provided to marginalized groups - including people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, women, and people from working-class backgrounds. Hence, we strongly encourage applications from people with these identities and members of other marginalized communities.

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Course Topics:

We are keen to develop courses around plant synthetic biology and biomaterial for bio-art and design but will accept any ideas that are both engaging and possible to develop for a BSL-1 community lab. If you are interested in developing an original course idea, please submit a brief course overview for review. This should include the number of sessions, a list of topics covered in each session, and a list of potential activities and demonstrations to include in the course. All topics must be related to biology.

Course Development Guidelines:

All courses should include hands-on activities and demonstrations that can be conducted in a BSL-1 lab. These activities should aim to give participants experience and confidence with common skills and workflows from modern biological research. As such, we are not developing online-only courses at this time. However, sessions with no lab work may be online/remote to improve accessibility.

In addition to our focus on technical skills, you should also try to incorporate as many of the following research principles as possible:

• The importance and practice of careful observation.
• How to define a hypothesis and create an experiment to test it.
• Understanding of controls and how they can be used in scientific experiments.
• Statistical significance tests or other analytical approaches for gaining insights from data.
• Documentation of laboratory work.

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TO APPLY, COMPLETE THIS FORM: https://forms.gle/ukCkHFFY18akMUuE8