Mixed methods analysis of a unique pedagogical program to improve biology education

Background/Question/Methods

In response to the call for a more quantitative, integrative way approach to biology education, the Department of Biology at Florida International University commissioned a program to bring ‘Vision and Change’ objectives to our department. The QBIC (Quantifying Biology In the Classroom) Program was borne out of a collaboration between professors from the departments of Mathematics and Statistics, Chemistry, Biology and Physics. The Program serves as a ‘quantitative’ track optional for students primarily in the biology department, and is unique in terms of its mandatory curriculum, integrative classes, pedagogical approaches and emphasis on mathematics-based courses. After five years of the program and two graduating classes, we were interested in finding out if students who matriculated through QBIC were indeed benefitting from our approach in the way we predicted. We employed a mixed methods regression approach to determine if our students did significantly better, compared to a control group on end-of-matriculation standardized exams controlling separately for incoming high school GPA and SAT score. 

Results/Conclusions

Contrary to other published reports, we found that, at least for our demographic, SAT score was a better predictor (for both groups) of college GPA and performance on standardized exams. Students who matriculated through QBIC on average did significantly better on the MCATs and the GRE Biology subject test (given as an exit exam to ALL of our graduating seniors). QBIC students also were more likely to graduate college within four years. The results of our study indicate that our program overall is highly effective in graduating students who are highly competitive for professional programs (MD, PhD etc.) as determined by standardized exams. We view our results however with some caution as we do have the benefit of pre-selecting our student type, and have the benefit of smaller classes than some of our non-QBIC counterparts. We now embrace the challenge of up scaling some of our classroom approaches to the higher enrollment courses with the overall goal of extending the positive results we have seen to the rest of the department.