Joe Dauer

Contact Information

My Story

Hello, my name is Joe Dauer and I am an assistant professor of life science education in the School of Natural Resources. As a life sciences education researcher, I focus on how undergraduate students learn biology.

My life sciences education research is grounded in my background in ecology. My graduate research at Penn State University was on long-distance seed dispersal of herbicide-resistant weeds in agricultural systems. I continued research on invasive species population dynamics at Oregon State University and Michigan State University. I also completed postdoctoral research at Michigan State University studying undergraduate student conceptual model construction in undergraduate biology.

My life sciences research broadly rests at the intersection of biology (genetics, ecology, and evolution), education, and cognitive psychology. At UNL, my work focuses on how students learn to organize biological concepts using systems thinking. I focus on how students organize and store knowledge because this will determine how they are able to access that knowledge when asked to apply it in novel scenarios. When students store knowledge in discrete units (like knowing a definition of a word), they are limited in the ways they can apply that knowledge compared to another student that has a network of concepts. This is the core of 'chunking'. Experts in an area, create larger and larger 'chunks' of knowledge such that they have multiple access points to a concept. Novices, like many undergraduate students new to learning life sciences, have much smaller 'chunks' and need help in how to strategically add more knowledge and, most importantly, how to connect the knowledge pieces together.

I am currently working on two research themes:

I am collaborating with Tomas Helikar (UNL) to develop, deploy, and research how students learn to model complex biological systems (learn.cellcollective.org). We have developed learning modules related to cellular respiration, gene regulation, cell cycling, glucose homeostasis, and food web dynamics. On the research side, my lab compares students that build versus investigate models, examines the social nature of model construction, investigates how students relate data and models, and determines the alternative concepts represented in students' models. We are very interested in the process of modeling and how to improve the students' modeling competency as they prepare for careers in life sciences.

I also conduct research on student reasoning of ecological systems. I have conducted research on student reasoning about food web dynamics and sexual selection. I am particularly interested in how students integrate quantitative reasoning into their ecological understanding of systems. Since biology in the 21st Century is largely related to quantitative modeling, I want to better understand how students develop mastery of both disciplines as they advance through their undergraduate curriculum.

In addition to being a life sciences researcher, I am an educator. I am often found preparing to teach Introductory Biology and Ecology courses where I integrate my research findings into my pedagogical approach.

Selected Publications

Background

Affiliations

• Science Literacy, UNL

Awards

Professional Organizations

Websites

• Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research (SABER)
• UNL Discipline-Based Education Research

SNR Program Areas

• Applied Ecology

Areas of Interest/Expertise

• Science Literacy
• Undergraduate Learning in Biology
• Visualizations
• Cognition
• Pedagogy

Grants

Currently this page only displays grants that were awarded on 1/1/ 2009 to the present. If a grant was awarded prior to 1/1/ 2009 and is still active, it will not be displayed on this page.

Advising

Courses Taught