We report on a project in which faculty from 15 colleges and universities used biological Diagnostic Questions Clusters (DQCs), diagnostic tools akin to concept inventories that are developed by rigorous education research. These tools are designed to help faculty: 1) organize introductory courses around key concepts and biologically-principled thinking based on an overarching framework and 2) identify and gauge students’ progress on specific principles that are especially problematic for students. The DQCs that we have developed focus on key biogeochemical processes in socio-ecological systems at multiple scales, including cellular and organismal metabolism, ecosystem energetics and carbon cycling, carbon sequestration, and combustion of fossil fuels. These processes: (a) create organic carbon (photosynthesis), (b) transform organic carbon (biosynthesis, digestion, food webs, carbon sequestration), and (c) oxidize organic carbon (cellular respiration, combustion). The primary cause of global climate change is the current worldwide imbalance among these processes.
Results/Conclusions
Results of this research show that even science majors commonly rely on a form of informal reasoning that construes the events of the world as caused by actors (including people, animals, plants, machines, and flames), each with its own purposes and abilities, or by natural tendencies of inanimate materials. When students with these ways of thinking about the world take college biology courses, they tend to focus on the details of processes without recognizing how these processes are constrained by fundamental principles such as conservation of matter and energy. The result is that they memorize and forget rather than learning to think about the processes they study in a principled way.
Resolving these problems requires (a) assessment tools such as DQCs that enable faculty to understand and respond to their students, (b) teaching tools that emphasize active learning and principled reasoning, and (c) support for faculty in the form of a community of practice that enables them to share ideas and explore new approaches. We report on our progress in creating both the tools and the community, with preliminary data about effects on student learning.
