Often undergraduate science students perceive their laboratory and field exercises as just that – exercises – unrelated to the actual process and practice of science, jumping from one cursory examination of a topic to the next from week to week, and of little real value.  Students also have difficulty linking concepts and tools from different courses, especially across disciplines. In an attempt to ameliorate these problems, I (as part of a larger project involving multiple courses in four scientific disciplines) initiated a new approach to teaching an upper-level biology elective course called “Pollution Biology”.  My approach had several elements. First, to engage the students in the material I set the entire laboratory part of the course in the context of a real-world environmental issue, the functioning of a stormwater remediation wetland on our campus. Second, as a class we used previously collected data from other biology and chemistry courses to inform our own field studies and laboratory-based toxicological experiments.  Third, students in groups proposed, conducted, and analyzed studies they felt addressed the most important gaps in our understanding of the wetland facility. Pre- and post-tests of student comprehension of course content, perception of their abilities, and interest in the material were administered to assess the success of the approach.

Results/Conclusions

In general, student perception was positive; students were more interested in the material and felt they learned more, because of the context. Moreover, students achieved significant gains in content knowledge over the semester.