Microbiologist refocuses research on the practice of teaching

Once Dr. Harold Bull (PhD), a professor in the College of Medicine, started researching about teaching practices, he said his whole worldview on teaching changed.

Bull paid closer attention to his approach to teaching and made adjustments based on what he was learning. He said one of the biggest changes he made was to not focus as much on specific content and covering “everything,” but rather focus on student learning of what is covered.

“In my fourth-year molecular genetics class, I used to make sure students knew the latest concepts of molecular genetics, but I realized what is current today will likely not be relevant in five or so years,” said Bull. “What will always be relevant are the skills involved in thinking about and analyzing concepts. So now I focus on teaching fewer concepts, but in a way that will allow my students to apply what they learned when thinking about future problems.”

Bull is a member of one of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) clusters at USask. Their BioMeducation cluster was the first one formed just prior to the project launch back in 2016 and was granted funding by the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning.

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