Gitner Award for Innovation in Teaching with Technology: Past Awardees

2025 Gitner Award Winner

Elizabeth Co, of the Department of Biology

For subjects as complex to teach as anatomy and biology, Senior Lecturer Elizabeth Co knows not every student learns the same way and that certain concepts require tailored approaches to help ensure students remain up to speed. To help meet this challenge, she looked to a novel software program: one that lets her measure the success of her own teaching methods on exams and pinpoint – using student performance data – the pedagogical practices that best enhance critical thinking, a key goal of STEM courses.

When Dr. Co first adopted the ExamSoft program, it was to upgrade the visual quality of anatomy images she used on exams, enabling students to manipulate and zoom in on high-resolution color pictures on their devices, without allowing for cheating. An added bonus of the software was the ability to break down and identify the types of questions where students performed notably better (memorization and understanding) and those requiring more time and attention (application and analysis). Using that data, Dr. Co quickly realized the only way to improve students’ ability to not only digest but apply new knowledge was by increasing critical thinking opportunities in class. Virtually overnight, she transformed her classroom to provide more time applying those skills through case studies and problem sets. Within weeks, student performance on final exams was strong across all areas with marked improvement in critical thinking.

News of Dr. Co’s success and adoption of ExamSoft spread quickly across the biology department and later to programs within other schools. It would serve a key role during the COVID pandemic, as Dr. Co led efforts to implement the technology University-wide and mentor faculty on its use to provide students with detailed feedback during remote learning. Today nearly 10,000 BU students use ExamSoft in one or more of their classes, and Dr. Co’s work has resulted in numerous publications, workshops for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Science Foundation, and international conference presentations. “Dr. Co is what all other professors should strive to be,” writes one of her students. “Her class is challenging but so rewarding in the end because she teaches her students to think critically and reason their way through every question and case study.”