Our Approach

We have implemented a "mixed" instructional approach for delivering biology content to engineering students that uses both traditional methods for establishing the foundation, then challenges the students to use the tools given them to understand and solve a problem. This approach, which uses a real-world problem as a contextual framework for learning biology, is applied to each of a series of "curriculum modules" and follows this sequence:

1. Describe a real-world problem chosen to provide a contextual framework from within which to learn the concepts chosen for and apply new concepts.

2. Introduce key material in a standard lecture format on the first day of the learning module.

3. Assign additional reading and homework to cement the key concepts and to encourage familiarity with and use of correct language and vocabulary.

4. Engage the students with in-class exercises that require them to use the concepts they are learning to understand problems posed and additional material introduced.

5. Require that students apply the concepts themselves to carry out hands-on laboratory exercises.

This mixed instructional approach has several benefits:

• New material is introduced and explained to the students in an instructional format they are familiar with, but that is limited so as to avoid tedium.
• Reading and homeworks require that students "flesh out" the material without using additional class time.
• In-class discussions provide a supportive environment to practice concepts and identify conceptual errors.
• Laboratory exercises provide actual, physical experience with the concepts and techniques

This project was funded by a grant from the NSF Action Agenda Program.
This site archives the original version of the course. For more information on
how the course is taught today, please visit: http://www.biologyforengineers.org

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