Integrative Biology and Physiology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA.
Psychology Department, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA.
Bull Math Biol. 2022 Feb 12;84(3):43. doi: 10.1007/s11538-022-00999-4.
There is a growing realization that traditional "Calculus for Life Sciences" courses do not show their applicability to the Life Sciences and discourage student interest. There have been calls from the AAAS, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the NSF, and the American Association of Medical Colleges for a new kind of math course for biology students, that would focus on dynamics and modeling, to understand positive and negative feedback relations, in the context of important biological applications, not incidental "examples." We designed a new course, LS 30, based on the idea of modeling biological relations as dynamical systems, and then visualizing the dynamical system as a vector field, assigning "change vectors" to every point in a state space. The resulting course, now being given to approximately 1400 students/year at UCLA, has greatly improved student perceptions toward math in biology, reduced minority performance gaps, and increased students' subsequent grades in physics and chemistry courses. This new course can be customized easily for a broad range of institutions. All course materials, including lecture plans, labs, homeworks and exams, are available from the authors; supporting videos are posted online.
人们越来越意识到，传统的“生命科学微积分”课程并没有显示出它们对生命科学的适用性，也没有激发学生的兴趣。美国科学促进会、霍华德休斯医学研究所、美国国家科学基金会和美国医学院协会都呼吁为生物学学生开设一种新型的数学课程，该课程将侧重于动力学和建模，以在重要的生物学应用背景下理解正负反馈关系，而不是偶然的“例子”。我们设计了一门新课程 LS 30，其理念是将生物学关系建模为动力系统，然后将动力系统可视化，为状态空间中的每个点分配“变化向量”。这门课程目前在加州大学洛杉矶分校每年有大约 1400 名学生修读，极大地提高了学生对生物学中数学的认识，缩小了少数族裔学生的成绩差距，并提高了学生随后在物理和化学课程中的成绩。这门新课程可以很容易地为广泛的机构定制。所有课程材料，包括讲座计划、实验室、作业和考试，都可以从作者那里获得；支持视频也在网上发布。
