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| Curriculum Development > College > Comprehensive Programs > Biological Perspectives > Frequently Asked Questions | |||||||||||||||||
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Biological PerspectivesFrequently Asked Questions
To what student population is Biological Perspectives primarily directed? Biological Perspectives is designed for use in college courses in introductory biology. The program's content is most appropriate for non-majors, though the active, inquiry-based and collaborative approach that the program promotes is appropriate for students at all levels. Return to top To what faculty population is the program primarily directed? The program is directed primarily at faculty who take seriously the challenge of helping students develop the skills and knowledge associated with biological literacy. Because the program shares some characteristics with more traditional curricula while advocating incremental and carefully sequenced change, it also is ideal for faculty interested in moving from an emphasis on didactic presentation of content to a more student-focused instructional style. Return to top How does the student text for Biological Perspectives compare with other college-level textbooks in introductory biology? The text shares many features with other college-level texts: it addresses the core content of biology (cell biology, physiology, genetics, evolution, ecology, behavior); it is organized in three units that gradually shift the students' focus from the individual organism (Unit 1) to the organism and its biological family (Unit 2) to the organism and the rest of the living and nonliving world (Unit 3); and it contains traditional tools for promoting student learning, such as chapter concepts, thought and discussion questions, a glossary and an index. The text is different, however, in many respects. First, it takes a conceptual approach to biology, an approach that emphasizes understanding ideas and relationships over rote memorization. The facts and terms of the discipline are there, but they are presented as tools that help students understand and talk about biology, not as the end-goal of their study. Second, the text's wide margins, annotations and consumable format promote active engagement with the information presented, thus helping students build the skills of literacy as they acquire knowledge of the field. Third, the text is written in two distinct styles to maximize student learning of both the concepts and the language of biology. The primary narrative is written in a conversational style that connects the big ideas of the discipline with the students' lives. In contrast, the "Basics About" readings explain fundamental information using concise language supplemented by detailed figures. Return to top How does the faculty resource guide (Teaching Tools) compare with the instructor's manuals of other college-level textbooks in introductory biology? The faculty resource guide for Biological Perspectives, available on the instructor's CDROM, is very different. First, it contains an in-depth introduction and rationale for the program written by Maryellen Weimer of Penn State University, well-known expert in active-learning strategies at the college level. Included in this introduction and rationale are a discussion of the definition of biological literacy, a description of four families of active-learning strategies that can help students improve their biological literacy, recommendations about how to introduce a more student-centered approach into a college classroom and a discussion of other course planning issues such as syllabus construction and the assessment of both learning and teaching. In addition, the guide offers practical advice for avoiding or minimizing common pitfalls in using active learning strategies. Second, the faculty resource guide for Biological Perspectives describes and includes all the required masters for more than 60 inquiry-based activities designed for use in college classrooms. These activities range in length and complexity from thought-provoking five-minute class openers to in-depth role plays and structured debates; support the major concepts presented in the student text; and also include three "How Do We Know?" activities (one for each unit) that help students understand the experimental basis for our current understanding of biology. Return to top How does the laboratory manual (Thinking Biologically) compare with the laboratory manuals of other college-level textbooks in introductory biology? The 14 investigations in the laboratory manual are keyed specifically to the 14 chapters in Biological Perspectives. The investigations are primarily guided inquiries, designed to promote student participation in and reflection about the processes of science, such as hypothesis formation, experimental design, model-building and field study. Each investigation also includes a section titled "Make Connections" that helps students connect the biology they are learning to aspects of their daily lives. Return to top How do students respond to the approach taken in Biological Perspectives? The approach changes students' ideas of what is expected of them during class and what is required to learn. Students discover that they have to think rather than just listen, read and memorize; they learn that it takes effort to understand important concepts and to speak and write clearly about them. Typically, there is an initial period of resistance to these new requirements--students at the college level are comfortable and have been successful with a less demanding lecture and memory-based approach to learning. Nevertheless, as students begin to understand what is required and why and as they begin to experience the satisfaction that comes from actively working with and applying ideas, most accept the approach and many come to value it. Return to top What are the potential benefits to students of studying biology using the approach embodied in Biological Perspectives? First, the approach offers students multiple, varied and concrete opportunities to practice the skills of independent thinking, clear communication and critical analysis, skills that are vital to life and central to the notion of biological literacy as it is defined by most science educators today. Second, students recognize the importance of being personally involved in the learning process. The level of intellectual effort and involvement required to truly learn-and not just memorize-comes as a surprise and a shock to most students, but it is a critical lesson for students preparing themselves to move into jobs or on to graduate study in any field. Finally, students using the approach may come to appreciate biology as a discipline of important and relevant concepts (not just as a body of disarticulated facts and terms); develop an appreciation of scientific processes as they can be applied in many different situations; and learn to use a rich set of study strategies (for example, matrices, concept mapping, marginal notes) that are also useful in other courses and in professional work. Return to top What are the benefits to faculty of using the approach embodied in Biological Perspectives? The approach offers faculty at least two key benefits. First, the program addresses faculty concerns about the biological literacy of their students by providing concrete strategies to promote its development. And second, the program offers faculty an effective and flexible vehicle for instructional change. Although the program includes specific ideas and tools for promoting active learning in the college classroom, these ideas and tools are presented in a flexible format that allows faculty to orchestrate their instruction in ways that best meet their students' learning needs and their instructional goals. Return to top When I compare Biological Perspectives to other texts, the content looks watered down. Is the program rigorous enough to qualify as a college-level course? It depends on how you define "rigor." If you mean an exhaustive compendium of biological terms and facts, then Biological Perspectives may be less "rigorous" than traditional texts. On the other hand, if you mean a program that demands substantive involvement of students' minds with the complexity and beauty of biological systems, then using Biological Perspectives with an active-learning instructional style will meet your goal of rigor better than most programs currently available. To accomplish this goal, students must be actively involved in thinking, writing and speaking about biology and faculty's standards for student performance must be high. Thus, the Biological Perspectives text is intended to be used with a rigorous and effective active-learning instructional style as described in the Teaching Tools component of the program. Return to top My students will not respond well to being asked to participate in collaborative learning activities. What is the rationale for including such activities in the program and what strategies can I use to help students be more comfortable with the program? The introduction to Teaching Tools summarizes the research demonstrating that students who are actively involved in thinking, writing and talking about course content learn the content as well as or better than students taught with a more traditional, lecture-based style. In addition, however, students who learn content by actively working with and applying it also develop skills of independent thinking, problem solving and communication that students taught with a strictly lecture-based approach do not. Teaching Tools also offers several suggestions for how to help students feel comfortable with this approach to learning, such as describing the supporting research to students at the beginning of the course; introducing active learning and collaborative experiences slowly, as students gain both the skills and the self confidence to be successful; and being sure to assess student learning in ways that are consistent with not only the content but also the instructional strategies to which students have been exposed. Return to top My students will be unhappy with not being able to sell their textbooks back at the end of the course. What answer can I give them to ease their concern? The wide margins and flexible format of the student text are designed to provide students and teachers two key benefits. First, these features offer students the opportunity and encouragement to use their textbooks in the way they should be used--not as compendiums of information to be memorized, but as tools to promote active reflection and discussion about important biological content. As students write notes and questions in the text's wide margins, they are required to think in substantive ways about the content they are reading, ways that go well beyond the thinking required to simply highlight important sentences and paragraphs. Likewise, as students exchange and discuss their annotated pages with each other, they gain concrete experience and develop real confidence in their ability to read critically and use the language of biology to analyze, synthesize and apply its central ideas. Although these goals conceivably could be met using a text with a more traditional, hard-bound format, the flexible format of Biological Perspectives avoids the reluctance students might feel about using a book that they will want to sell back to the bookstore in such an active and intellectually aggressive manner. Second, the flexible format allows students and faculty to personalize their textbooks by rearranging pages; inserting answers to "Track Your Understanding" questions; and adding supplementary content, assignments and graded quizzes and exams. This capacity to be enriched and personalized allows the textbook to become what it should be across the duration of the course: a course-specific and highly useful tool for both effective teaching and deep and meaningful learning. Return to top |
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