Educators ponder teaching biology as a scientific enterprise

Chilly fall weather may not always conjure thoughts of a distant summer learning experience, but the academic research biologist just might be dreaming of a summer course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.

Intense, challenging, exclusive — and in an idyllic summer venue — the course provides an immersion experience intended to jump-start and invigorate the creative process of biological research.

Now, imagine a similar course, this time an intensive experience to impart new and improved models of instruction for the large undergraduate biology classroom. Taught in a pleasant summer setting, say, lakeside Madison, Wis., by a cadre of instructional innovators, such a course might assume the same cachet as those taught at Cold Spring Harbor.

Supported by the National Research Council, a pilot for such a course will be held in Madison next summer.

“We think a short course on that order would be an opportunity to teach people effective new classroom techniques,” says Millard Susman, a UW emeritus professor of genetics and former director of the Center for Biology Education.

The idea, he says, was inspired by an NRC report, “Bio 2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists.” The report concludes that faculty development is a crucial component for improving undergraduate biology education, and argues that universities need to provide faculty opportunities to refine classroom techniques, and better integrate concepts in math and physical sciences with biology.

A critical theme of any summer course, says Lillian Tong, a faculty associate in the Center for Biology Education, is to disseminate ways of integrating “current research into courses that actively engage students in thinking and working as scientists.”

Jo Handelsman, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor and a professor of plant pathology, adds that universities need to emphasize that the classroom, and the application of teaching and learning methodologies, require the same kind of rigor and evaluation expected in the lab.

“It’s not just about teaching techniques,” says Handelsman, who served on the NRC planning committee for a workshop last summer that laid the groundwork for a pilot course next summer. “It’s about changing philosophy. We are promoting the idea that teaching should be a scientific enterprise, just like research.”

One goal is to increase the number of students who might consider career paths in biomedical research. Providing practice with experimental design, and enhancing students’ quantitative abilities and communications skills, notes Tong, would not only benefit the future biomedical scientist, but also would significantly benefit students on other career trajectories.

At last summer’s workshop, Summer Institute Planning Committee co-chair Bill Wood of the University of Colorado told faculty research biologists from around the country about “the small revolution going on in undergraduate education.”

More data suggest that current course formats and information are ineffective and may be counterproductive, he told participants. Instructional techniques centered on active learning, inquiry-based instruction and collaborative learning seem to work better.

“Most university research instructors are unaware that this work is going on,” Wood says. “Also, universities tend to be naturally resistant to change.”

The hope is the pilot course this summer will bring together front-line researchers and those who’ve achieved recognition for their classroom work to share proven teaching methods, and to look at ancillary issues such as the logic of assessing and evaluating student learning. More emphasis, Tong notes, is being placed on applying quantitative and qualitative measurements to see what works and what doesn’t.

“We’re essentially trying to model a workshop and see how it goes,” says Wood, who chaired the NRC committee that issued the “Bio 2010” report.

The idea, Wood argues, is to capture “some of the same excitement and total immersion that these Cold Spring courses have. Stay tuned, because I think this is going to have an impact.”