Assignment Spotlight- The Scientist Spotlights Initiative

I recently shared a quote by Booker T. Washington that read, "Instead of studying books so constantly, how I wish that our schools and colleges might learn to study men and things". I posted this quote in a group for College Educators on Social Media and asked how other educators were accomplishing this task and one educator shared with me this awesome site called The Scientist Spotlights Initiative and I immediately checked it out and thought of some great assignments that could be easily implemented into any online course. Check out today's blog post for details.

The Scientist Spotlights Initiative

The Scientist Spotlights Initiative is a community of students, pre-college teachers, university and college instructors, and scientific professionals committed to making the sciences more inclusive and more representative of the wonderful, diverse scientist communities. Their website states that they aim to promote diversity and inclusion in science – middle school through college – through development, assessment, and dissemination of curriculum supplements that bring science role models to students in the context of learning science content.

The Scientist Spotlights Initiative is curated by college and university students – in particular students of color, first-generation college-going students, and LGBTQ+ students – in the context of their own undergraduate studies in service-learning courses, making it an excellent resource for college students.

It was developed by Professor Jeffrey Schinske to provide representations of scientists besides himself and from a greater diversity of personal backgrounds than his own for the wonderful students in his community college biology courses.

Assignments related to The Scientist Spotlights Initiative

Assignment Idea 1:

As this is a site that is curated by students and professors, I think an excellent assignment idea would be to have students contribute to the growing body of information on the site. A student can select a scientist related to a topic being taught and develop a scientist spotlight for submission. The Scientist Spotlights Website has a page with information about how to make a submission and the resources that must be included. These can serve as the assignment guidelines. The course instructor can also make arrangements to approve the scientist and assignment prior to submission.

Assignment Idea 2:

 Additionally, an assignment can include doing a search of the site and writing a summary on the scientist selected and sharing why this scientist was selected. Furthermore, you might also ask the student to include one piece of information that was not shared that they researched independently.

I'd love to hear your ideas on this assignment. Share them in The Online Educator Facebook Group!

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