Marine Science Department, University of Georgia, 325 Sanford Drive, Athens, GA 30602.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Kennesaw State University, Marietta, GA 30144.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2024 Sep;23(3):ar37. doi: 10.1187/cbe.23-05-0081.
Biology education researchers seek to improve biology education, particularly at the introductory level, yet there is little documentation about what is actually happening in introductory biology. To characterize the landscape of learning expectations for introductory biology, we analyzed course-level learning objectives ( = 1108) and course schedules from 188 nonmajor, mixed major, and major introductory biology syllabi. We analyzed syllabi collected from a diverse range of U.S. institution types to uncover insights about instructional design decisions for introductory biology. Our analysis revealed two distinct nonmajor course types: content and issues-based courses. We found syllabi tend to focus on low-cognitive skills and factual content that is essentially a march in step with a typical textbook table of contents, rarely including core competencies or socioscientific issues (SSIs) other than in nonscience major issues-based courses. Our work contributes more evidence that faculty struggle to write course-level learning objectives. Our findings suggest that there is much work to do if Vision and Change are to become more than simply a vision-to be actualized as change-including developing CLOs for introductory biology as a first step toward creating actionable instructional change.
生物学教育研究者致力于改善生物学教育，尤其是在入门阶段，但对于入门生物学中实际发生的情况，我们的了解甚少。为了描述入门生物学的学习期望，我们分析了 188 份非专业、混合专业和专业入门生物学课程大纲的课程水平学习目标（=1108）和课程安排。我们分析了来自不同类型美国机构的课程大纲，以揭示入门生物学教学设计决策的见解。我们的分析揭示了两种截然不同的非专业课程类型：内容型和问题型课程。我们发现，课程大纲往往侧重于低认知技能和基本事实内容，这些内容基本上与典型的课本目录同步，很少包括核心能力或社会科学问题（SSIs），除非是非科学专业的问题型课程。我们的工作提供了更多证据表明，教师在撰写课程水平学习目标方面存在困难。我们的研究结果表明，如果要将《愿景与变革》不仅仅视为一种愿景——而是将其变为实际的变革，包括为入门生物学制定课程学习目标，那么还有很多工作要做，这是朝着创造可行的教学变革迈出的第一步。
