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ERIC Number: EJ1024708
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014-Mar
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1931-7913
EISSN: N/A
Integrating Quantitative Thinking into an Introductory Biology Course Improves Students' Mathematical Reasoning in Biological Contexts
Hester, Susan; Buxner, Sanlyn; Elfring, Lisa; Nagy, Lisa
CBE - Life Sciences Education, v13 n1 p54-64 Mar 2014
Recent calls for improving undergraduate biology education have emphasized the importance of students learning to apply quantitative skills to biological problems. Motivated by students' apparent inability to transfer their existing quantitative skills to biological contexts, we designed and taught an introductory molecular and cell biology course in which we integrated application of prerequisite mathematical skills with biology content and reasoning throughout all aspects of the course. In this paper, we describe the principles of our course design and present illustrative examples of course materials integrating mathematics and biology. We also designed an outcome assessment made up of items testing students' understanding of biology concepts and their ability to apply mathematical skills in biological contexts and administered it as a pre/postcourse test to students in the experimental section and other sections of the same course. Precourse results confirmed students' inability to spontaneously transfer their prerequisite mathematics skills to biological problems. Pre/postcourse outcome assessment comparisons showed that, compared with students in other sections, students in the experimental section made greater gains on integrated math/biology items. They also made comparable gains on biology items, indicating that integrating quantitative skills into an introductory biology course does not have a deleterious effect on students' biology learning. [Supplemental material for this article can be found at: http://www.lifescied.org/content/suppl/2014/02/12/13.1.54.DC1.html.]
American Society for Cell Biology. 8120 Woodmont Avenue Suite 750, Bethesda, MD 20814-2762. Tel: 301-347-9300; Fax: 301-347-9310; e-mail: ascbinfo@ascb.org; Website: http://www.ascb.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Arizona
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A