Editorial

Introducing Biosciences Education Electronic journal (BEE-j)

This is the first issue of a new electronic journal which will be produced twice a year by the LTSN Centre for Bioscience. We hope that you find it interesting and will feel tempted to contribute to future issues.

The aims of the journal are to promote, enhance and disseminate research, good practice and innovation in all aspects of UK undergraduate and postgraduate education in the biosciences to an audience that will include teachers, researchers, employers, policy makers, developers and strategic planners at all levels. It aims to encourage greater understanding and the formation of links and collaborations across all the UK biosciences. It will maintain high quality through being both peer-reviewed and fully archived whilst also being freely available on-line to maximise availability to those who are interested. Authors will retain the copyright for their articles which, after this first issue, will appear on the WWW as soon as they are accepted for publication.

The need for a journal of this type was revealed to us by a survey of our constituency and this is our response to that expressed need. There are, of course, many ‘educational’ journals, some generic and some specific to particular subject areas. In our experience, however, people in the biosciences rarely consider publishing in the generic educational journals and indeed, rarely read them. This is probably because they are not familiar with the educational ‘jargon’ often used and we regard it as one of the functions of the LTSN Centre for Bioscience to ‘translate’ the findings of educational researchers into a language that bioscientists can not only understand but also use in their teaching. This is not intended as a criticism of the educational journals but is simply a reflection of the situation. It is a curious feature that, whereas scientific research looks at previous work and the available literature and then goes on from there, in teaching many teachers (not all) tend to teach the way they were taught at university rather than take on board the research into pedagogy and learning that has taken place. Research into how people learn should always inform our practice and we all need to take account of changes in the experience and learning practices of the current student population. Teachers in bioscience departments do, of course, learn about educational developments through the activities of educational developers and perhaps QAA inspections: cast your mind back – who a few years ago would have understood what was meant by ‘formative’ and ‘summative’ assessments? Similarly, I think most now understand the value of ‘peer review’ of teaching. There are many more examples that could be given. Furthermore, there are increasing numbers of people around the world who are now carrying out educational (pedagogic) research through action research. Most of us adjust our teaching to the various factors we are influenced by, in particular the student responses, the economic climate and the workload pressures we are subject to. Some of us are more structured and formal about how we try new things in our teaching and evaluate their effects, and this can lead to material and experience worth publishing and disseminating to the wider bioscience teaching and learning community. We hope that this new journal will provide a means of disseminating such material and we strongly urge you to consider using Bioscience Education as the vehicle for doing so.

Each issue will contain a variety of articles and reviews; these are listed at http://bio.ltsn.ac.uk/journal/vol1/. For further information on how to submit articles please go to http://bio.ltsn.ac.uk/journal/authinstructions.htm and follow the links.

Allan Jones
Editor-in-Chief
Life Sciences Teaching Unit
Old Medical School
University of Dundee
Dundee DD1 4HN, UK

a.m.jones@dundee ac.uk

By popular demand . . .

The LTSN Centre for Bioscience decided to produce an electronic journal, the Bioscience Education Electronic journal (BEE-j) in which people can publish their ideas and the results of pedagogic research in the bioscience area. The original idea for such a journal came from a survey of the Bioscience constituency, asking about their needs. This is LTSN Bioscience in reactive mode! The journal will be freely available on the Web and, it is hoped, will attract papers from all around the world so that good practice and innovative ideas can be shared. It is important to note that the material in the journal will be bioscience based. The subject focus is important. Bioscientist can talk to bioscientist and share ideas about teaching: they find it sometimes more difficult to read and apply the material published in the mainline educational journals.

This venture will give the LTSN Centre for Bioscience a high visibility worldwide. I welcome this bold innovation and wish it success.

Cliff Allan
LTSN Programme Director
LTSN Executive