A milestone for creative biology teaching

If you visited an introductory biology class at the University of Minnesota, you might think you had walked into the wrong room.

Instead of a professor lecturing to students furiously scribbling notes, you’d see students seated around circular desks. You’d hear them, several per desk, discussing or debating concepts and ideas among themselves, working together to analyze data and apply what they’re learning.

Welcome to Foundations of Biology, the College of Biological Sciences’ (CBS) two-course introductory sequence. The crown jewel of the college’s Biology Teaching and Learning (BTL) Department, it just marked its first decade of introducing tomorrow’s biologists to their chosen field through active learning.

“About 20 years ago, a push began across the country to do more scientific analysis of educational outcomes to ensure our students actually learn what we want them to learn,” says David Kirkpatrick, head of BTL. “What we saw across the board was how effective active learning was in the classroom.”

The appeal of active learning has spread through the Twin Cities campus. Today, the relatively new Bruininks Hall is devoted to active learning in a variety of fields.

Active self-examination

Just as BTL was getting off the ground, the journal Proceedings of the

National Academy of Sciences published a meta-analysis on the benefits of active learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Among its findings was that in the studies the authors analyzed, “active learning leads to increases in examination performance that would raise average grades by a half a letter, and that failure rates under traditional lecturing increase by 55% over the rates observed under active learning.”

The three authors of that 2014 study included Sarah Eddy, who is now an associate professor in BTL.

Former and current BTL faculty have also studied other factors affecting student success in STEM courses. For example, in one study, they found that in introductory science courses with grades based on high-stakes exams, female students tended to underperform compared to male students. This gap did not appear in upper level courses

A second study indicated that hidden identities, such as sexual orientation, political affiliation, or religion, could affect the students’ feelings about their experiences with active learning. It recommended that educators proactively seek to make all students feel welcome and comfortable in active learning environments.

One particular finding shines through the web of research.

“We are finding that how an instructor appeals to students' personal values through the relevance of content to their lives and future careers is one of the strongest predictors of engagement,” Eddy says.

This story is adapted from a College of Biological Sciences article.