Data-driven decision making in introductory biology for non-majors

How do you get a group of passionate biology teachers to agree on how to teach an introductory non-majors course? You show them data! By conducting careful research into teaching and learning, we have united a team of five faculty into an instructional powerhouse. By turning our pedagogical ideas into hypotheses and gathering data we have been able to answer questions about a variety of instructional challenges. Based on student data from evaluation instruments and surveys, we increased exam frequency, required more math while improving student attitudes about our lab classes, and avoided unnecessary changes to scheduling.