In many instances, a non-majors biology course is the only exposure students will have to ecological principles. Yet such courses and non-majors texts often devote less than 15% of their content to cover topics spanning populations to biomes. If a course goal is to contribute significantly toward producing an educated citizenry that possesses the tools to critically evaluate the vast amounts of information as well as environmental changes and decisions they are likely to encounter, ecology and ecosystems is a critical element in course design and organization. The non-majors biology GE course at CSU Chico was redesigned with that goal as a central focus. The course was organized into three themes: one third of the course is devoted to ecology and ecosystems, one third to evolution and final third to cell/molecular. In course redesign, incorporation of academic technology was also part of the approval process. The course structure is comprised of a weekly on-line lecture (powerpoint with voice), a one-hour discussion (with in-class response system) and a 2-hour lab, all three venues concentrating on the same weekly topic. Each theme also includes a case study approach in the lab that culminates in a group presentation and paper.
The course has been in place for six semesters and we are beginning to accumulate enough data to evaluate the effectiveness of the course structure as well as content. We used a series of assessment techniques including direct, indirect and embedded assessments to evaluate the course. We also compared student performance between the current technology-based course format and the traditional lecture/lab format that ran concurrently during the first three semesters of the redesigned non-majors course.
Results/Conclusions
Initially, overall course grades were significantly higher in the redesigned course with a mean grade of 2.7 versus the lecture/lab format mean of 2.2. The Drop, Withdrawal, Failure Rate (DWF) was also more than 50% lower in the redesigned course. Students scored higher on the ecology based exam questions in the new course format versus the lecture/lab format which is notable considering the new format exam questions required higher order thinking skills. More interestingly however, scores have gradually declined in the redesigned course over the last three semesters and the DWF rate has increased. The reasons behind this reversal from earlier trends are more difficult to discern but shifting the order of the ecology theme did improve scores for that particular theme while scores for the others dropped.
