(This poster was presented at the December, 1996
American Society for Cell Biology annual meeting.)
Teaching Introductory Biology The Same Way We Learn New Information:
In The Context Of Interesting Questions And On A Need-To-Know
Basis
A. Malcolm Campbell, Don L. Kimmel, and Jan R. Serie*
Departments of Biology, Davidson College, Davidson, NC 28036
and *Macalester College, St. Paul, MN 55105
''So, why do we have to know this?'' If you hear this question
from your students, you can be sure they will purge all the material
once the semester is over. To address this concern, we have developed
a Study Guide (download here) that
approaches introductory biology (cell and molecular) from a different
perspective. Instead of covering material by marching through
the chapters of a typical text, we cover the same material when
we need to know the information in order to answer attention-grabbing
questions. For example, students are asked how the sight of a
bear entering the room is converted into signals that cause their
livers to increase the concentration of glucose in their blood,
their hearts to beat harder, and their skeletal muscles to contract.
To answer these questions, they must understand phospholipid bilayers,
protein conformations, receptors and ligands, phosphorylation
cascades, calcium as a second messenger, membrane potentials,
etc. The Study Guide is divided into four sections: Cellular Communication,
Genetics, Bioenergetics, and ''Interesting Topics.'' In the genetics
section, they learn classical and molecular genetics in order
to identify the causes of sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis,
and Huntington's disease. The students learn why the US government
sprayed paraquat on marijuana in the 1970's, and why cyanide is
the poison of choice for terrorists as motivation for learning
photosynthesis and cellular respiration. Cancer, AIDS, and transgenic
organisms are covered in the final section as a way to integrate
all the material covered during the semester. The specific questions
that the students are asked can be changed to suit the interests
of the instructor and can help keep the material interesting and
fresh for the instructor, too. The Study Guide is very popular
with students and has been used successfully by several different
instructors so it is not ''personality-dependent.'' Any standard
introductory biology text can be used, though we currently use
Biology, by Neil Campbell.
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