Kloepper Laura N, Young Vanessa K Hilliard
Department of Biology Saint Mary's College Notre Dame Indiana USA.
Ecol Evol. 2021 Nov 9;11(22):15458-15467. doi: 10.1002/ece3.8315. eCollection 2021 Nov.
First-year majors organismal biology courses are frequently taught as survey courses that promote memorization rather than synthesis of biological concepts. To address the shortcomings of this approach, we redesigned the organismal portion of our introductory biology curriculum to create a "Foundations of Form and Function" course. Foundations of Form and Function introduces different organismal forms and focuses on the relationship between those forms and the execution of key physiological functions. Goals of our new course include the following: developing student recognition of common characteristics that unite living organisms as well as features that distinguish taxonomic groups, facilitating student understanding of how organisms accomplish similar functions through different forms, and reinforcing course themes with independent student research. In this paper, we describe course learning outcomes, organization, content, assessment, and laboratory activities. We also present student perspectives and outcomes of our course design based on data from four years of student evaluations. Finally, we explain how we modified our course to meet remote learning and social-distancing challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
生物有机体生物学的大一主修课程通常作为概论课程来教授，这类课程促进记忆而非生物概念的综合运用。为了弥补这种教学方法的不足，我们重新设计了生物学入门课程中的生物有机体部分，创建了一门“形态与功能基础”课程。“形态与功能基础”课程介绍了不同的生物有机体形态，并着重探讨这些形态与关键生理功能执行之间的关系。我们新课程的目标如下：培养学生识别将生物有机体统一起来的共同特征以及区分分类群的特征，促进学生理解生物有机体如何通过不同形态实现相似功能，并通过学生自主研究强化课程主题。在本文中，我们描述了课程学习成果、课程组织、内容、评估和实验室活动。我们还根据四年学生评估的数据，展示了学生对我们课程设计的看法和课程成果。最后，我们解释了我们如何修改课程以应对2020年和2021年新冠疫情带来的远程学习和社交距离挑战。
