Paula P Lemons
Assistant Professor of the Practice

On Leave until July 2008.

704-735-7687

3030 Wesleyan Church Rd.
Lincolnton, NC 28092

305 Bio Sci

Research Interests: biological pedagogy; biochemistry, cell and molecular biology

My research is in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) - an emerging field that entails the careful examination of one's own teaching and the teaching of others in a systematic way that is made public for peer review and for improving teaching and learning. My work in SOTL has taken two directions. One research direction involves the investigation of novice instructors (e.g., graduate teaching assistants), particularly in classrooms where students are engaged in small group activities like problem-based inquiries, case studies, and laboratory exercises.My other, more primary research focus is to investigate learning in beginning biology students, attempting to understand how their critical thinking abilities develop over time. Most recently, I have published a methodology for developing content-based questions that measure particular critical-thinking skills such as application, analysis, or synthesis (Bissell and Lemons, BioScience 2006).

Representative Publications   (More Publications)   (search)

1. A.N. Bissell and P.P. Lemons, A new method for assessing critical thinking in the classroom, BioScience, vol. 56 no. 1 (January, 2006), pp. 66-72  [abs].
2. Winter, D, Lemons, P. P., Hoese, W. J., and Bookman, J., Novice Instructors and Student-Centered Instruction: Identifying and Addressing Obstacles to Learning in the College Science Laboratory, Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, vol. 2 no. 1 (2001) [winters_v2_n1.pdf.] .
3. Lemons, P. P. and Huber, S. K, Dr. Collins and the Case of the Mysterious Infection, Collection of Case Studies in Science (2001) [http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/cases/infection/infection_notes.html] .
4. Huber, S. K. and Lemons, P. P., Threats to Biodiversity: A Case Study of Hawaiian Birds, Collection of Case Studies in Science (2002) [http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/cases/hawaii/hawaii_notes.html] .
5. Schraw, T. D., Lemons, P. P., Dean, W. L., and Whiteheart, S. W., A role for Sec1/Munc18 proteins in platelet exocytosis, Biochemical Journal, vol. 374 no. Part 1 (August 15, 2003), pp. 207-217 [htm]  [abs].
6. Lemons, P. P., Chen, D., and Whiteheart, S. W., Molecular Mechanisms of Platelet Exocytosis: Requirements for a-Granule Release, Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, vol. 267 (2000), pp. 875-880 .