A growing number of Introductory Physics for Life Sciences courses have been developed to prepare biology, premedicine, and prehealth majors for cross-disciplinary connections between physical principles and biological systems. Many students find it challenging to apply idealized algebra-based general physics to more complex biological systems. A…

Within the context of higher education, the disciplines of science and filmmaking appear disparate, but the importance of storytelling as an integral part of science and research deserves closer examination. Humans have always used stories to share information and convey complex ideas. To those outside science, science communications can be laden…

Liberal arts programs encompass a range of academic disciplines, and their effectiveness relies not only on what these disciplines are, but also on how they are integrated. The natural sciences are one important component of liberal arts programs that may be difficult to assimilate with the rest of the curriculum. In this paper, the topic of…

"Cases are stories with a message. They are not simply narratives for entertainment. They are stories to educate" (Herreid, 1997, p. 92). By this definition, a case study is two things: a story and a strategy to drive learning. Although the story typically comes from a narrative purposefully written for the classroom, such as the case…

This column provides original articles on innovations in case study teaching, assessment of the method, as well as case studies with teaching notes. This issue provides a recipe for writing great case studies.

Improving students' understanding of how science works requires explicit instruction. Here, we test the efficacy of a module based on two previously published activities (the "Cube Puzzle" and the case study "Asteroids and Dinosaurs") that teach how science works to college science majors. Students also use the How Science…

Anorexia nervosa is a complex behavioral disorder with the highest risk of death of any psychological disorder. Between 15% and 20% of those suffering from anorexia die from complications that are attributed either directly or indirectly to self-starvation. Heritability for anorexia is around 0.5, meaning about 50% of the risk for anorexia is…

The Game Changer is an interrupted case study that traces the football career of Anthony "Tony Tonka Truck" Williams and the types of brain trauma that he suffers from playing football, from junior league level through high school, college, and his draft into the pros. To be successful during this case, readers will have to be familiar…

A small undergraduate liberal arts college explored a model, grounded in the literature, to develop a shared vision for its science and math general education curriculum that focuses on scientific literacy skills. This process has allowed us to produce shared general education learning goals across our eight science and math departments, conduct…

Many science educators have been incorporating the use of case studies into their teaching. An advantage of using minicase studies is that they can be used at any time throughout the semester to reinforce important topics covered without having to sacrifice a large amount of class time. In this article, the authors present a series of 10 mini-case…

The need for a more robust, well-trained STEM workforce is becoming increasingly acute in the United States, and there is a clear need to recruit and retain a larger and more diverse population of undergraduate STEM majors. Although numerous efforts to improve engagement and support in the traditional P-16 classroom have been implemented…

This column provides original articles on innovations in case study teaching, assessment of the method, as well as case studies with teaching notes. This issue offers tips on writing an effective case study.

This column provides original articles on innovations in case study teaching, assessment of the method, as well as case studies with teaching notes. This issue discusses dialogue writing guidelines most relevant to case writing.

In this exploratory case study, we consider how students in an undergraduate biochemistry class engaged in the process of argumentation within an inquiry-oriented learning environment to investigate a chemical mechanism in a particular part of the tricarboxylic acid cycle. Audio/video recordings of student groups during the mechanism discussion…

Three years ago, the "National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science" (NCCSTS) was inspired to merge the case study and flipped classroom approaches. The resulting project aimed to create the materials required to teach a flipped course in introductory biology by assigning videos as homework and case studies in the classroom. Three…