STEPHANIE GARDNER

Assistant Professor
Lilly 2-226
496-2936

I teach undergraduate lecture and laboratory courses in Physiology and Neurobiology in the Department of Biological Sciences.   I have recently begun implementing the CASPiE (Center for Authentic Science Practice in Education) model in introductory biology lab courses which engages students in authentic research as freshmen as part of an NSF-funded project.   In the course, we partner with research faculty to identify research questions that can be investigated by the students as part of their normal introductory biology laboratory experience. 

A common thread in all of my laboratory courses is active student engagement in the activities by allowing them to design and execute their own experiments and present their results to the class and the department.  I am interested in assisting students gain the necessary scientific reasoning and practical skills to think like scientists.  I am particularly interested in evaluating student ability to logically dissect a problem, design experiments to test hypotheses, and be able to interpret and present their data.  Data gathered from these assessments can inform future course content and approaches to learning in my courses as well as provide new instructional approaches to be used elsewhere.  I am an active member of the Purdue International Biology Education Research Group (PIBERG).

Research in my group focuses within the context of engaging undergraduate students in the process of science and critical thinking.  Within this area I am currently working on three projects:  1) Evaluating the long-term impact that research-based introductory biology lab experiences have on student persistence in Biology and other STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) majors, performance in coursework, interest in research, and career choices, 2) Understanding student and expert reasoning when creating graphical representations of biological data, and 3) Investigating the effectiveness of explicit instruction of argumentation pattern on the development of student writing about their data.  In addition, I work in collaboration with Ed Bartlett to investigate age-related changes in auditory brain regions (neuroanatomy).