PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #68: Ecological Education -- Research and Theory.
Presiding: L. Mueller
Wednesday, August 7. 1:00 PM to 4:45 PM. Grand Ballroom West, Radisson.

Discovering new ways to introduce biology: integrating research, teaching, and learning .

Brewer, Carol^*,1, ¹ University of Montana, Missoula, MT

ABSTRACT- The challenge we face in creating student-centered education programs is how to transfer existing knowledge about teaching and learning to faculty, and then craft curricula and pedagogical strategies in which thinking skills and conceptual understanding are inextricably linked. Through a curriculum innovation program, Project IBS-CORE, at the University of Montana, we have developed a new year-long Introductory Biology series where faculty research is integrated into all elements of instruction in the course. The course is team-taught by biology faculty using a combination of lectures, active learning techniques designed for large lectures, small group discussions, and innovative technology to introduce first year students to cutting edge research. Discussions and presentations of core concepts are complemented by research-centered laboratories where students work in collaborative teams to explore research questions they generated from the topics covered during lectures and follow-up discussions. This approach to teaching introductory biology has a number of advantages for both the faculty members teaching in the course and the students. By enabling faculty to teach in discrete sections of 3 to 4 weeks, we have been able to engage the more top-level researchers in the education of introductory students. Students comment that they felt the material covered was more relevant and focused more on concepts than factual trivia. Moreover, students were highly enthusiastic about exploring their own questions in the laboratory. Longitudinal tracking data suggest that both students and faculty are satisfied that this approach has prepared participating students well for advanced courses in biology. Moreover, at the end of courses offered in this format, students are highly confident that they can critique an experiment they read about (p = 0.005), answer a question of their own experimentally (p = 0.018), and tutor another biology student (p = 0.001). Building on our initial offering as a special low enrollment course (~50 students, 2 labs) in the UM Honors College, each course is now offered as a large enrollment (>200 students, >10 labs) core introductory course.

KEY WORDS: introductory, biology, research, technology