Hello, my name is Joe Dauer and I am an associate 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 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 I study how they strategically add and connect the knowledge pieces together.
Currently I have two major projects that I lead.
While I focus my research on student learning, I am constantly connected to teaching and putting into practice evidence-based and theoretical practices that improve learning in my classroom. I find joy in teaching and connecting with students where they are. I invest heavily in improving my teaching and seek to make my classes inclusive and engaging for all students.
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.
Master of Applied Science
Master of Science in Natural Resource Sciencesincluding specializations in
Doctorate of Philosophy in Natural Resource Sciencesincluding specializations in