CREATE Science Seminar-Dr. Louise Mead and Dr. Alexa Warwick, BEACON Center, MSU

Title: ConnectedBio curriculum: three-dimensional learning
from molecules to populations

Abstract: Students are often taught evolution isolated from genetic and cellular mechanisms. In reality, a complete understanding of evolution requires knowledge spanning many biological sub-disciplines and levels. To address this issue, the ConnectedBio project team (MSU, Concord Consortium) is developing a set of technology-enhanced lessons for high school biology that meet national science standards. We hypothesize that thoughtfully integrating the practices of science with disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts will support students’ development of a network of connected biological concepts that students can use to make sense of evolutionary phenomena. This approach stands as a contrast and antidote to many approaches in biology education, which have often treated macro- and micro-biological concepts separately, resulting in learning of isolated processes rather than deep connections. Our novel curriculum is intended to foster integrated learning of genetics and evolution and helping students to make connections across biological levels. We use the evolutionary phenomena from the previously developed Evo-Ed cases as the basis for the curriculum. Here we present our curriculum development work to date, some initial survey data on student explanations of evolutionary change across levels of biological organization, and plans for evaluating student conceptual models during Spring 2019 curriculum piloting.