Vision and Change (V&C) in Undergraduate Biology Education Follow-Up

2009年，美国科学促进会(AAAS)举办了一次研讨会/会议，其中包括美国生物大学和学院教职员工的代表部分(总共500人)，讨论鉴于该学科本身的巨大变化，我们处理生物本科教育的方式需要改变的必要性。那次会议的结果是，2011年出版了一本名为《生物学本科教育的愿景与变革：行动的呼吁》的出版物，到目前为止，这本书已经分发给6000多人，一个网页的点击量约为5000次。出版物的基本提纲和一般内容反映了2009年会议的讨论情况，实际上是由一个与会者联合体撰写的。这次会议及其结果的传播得益于国家卫生研究所、霍华德·休斯医学研究所、国家科学院以及国家科学基金会内的生物学和教育与人力资源局的代表的支持。目前的项目是最初努力的后续行动，满足了与会者的要求，以确定社区对会议及其出版物(印刷和网上出版物)的反应。美国农业部的代表加入了计划这次会议的小组。智力上的优点：这个项目涉及生物界的很大一部分人。它关注的是发现生物本科教育中如何发生变化，并涵盖这样的主题：教员、高等教育机构和专业团体为响应广泛的变革呼声做了什么；这些变革行动的结果是什么；这些结果是如何被记录下来的；以及变革的单位是否包括不止一个或两个教职员工，以使一个或多个系参与到课程内和跨系的协调努力中来改变教学方法。这类信息可以为有兴趣描述学术界变革努力的教育研究人员提供有用的基础，并向感兴趣的教师和机构提供信息，说明如何在其学科教学中成功地建立新的方法。更广泛的影响：被纳入的机构、生物学领域和教师的广度说明了这个项目的更广泛的影响。此外，AAAS服务于所有STEM学科，因此这一努力的宣传可以导致其他学科尝试类似的努力来改进他们的本科教育方法。最初的努力已经引起了工程界的兴趣。美国医学院学院(关于医学预科和医科学生的准备)和教育考试服务(关于AP生物学)最近发表的努力反映了最初的愿景与变化出版物中的关切和建议，这一事实提高了社区对这次开创性会议的结果的兴趣。

In 2009 the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) held a workshop/meeting that included a representative segment of the nation's biology university and college faculty (500 attendees in all) in a discussion of the need for change in the way we approach biology undergraduate education in light of the vast changes in the discipline itself. That meeting resulted in a 2011 publication, Vision and Change in Biology Undergraduate Education: A Call for Action, that has, so far, been distributed to more than 6000 people and a web page that has had about 5,000 hits. The essential outline and general contents of the publication reflect the discussions at the 2009 meeting and were, in fact, written by a consortium of attendees. That meeting and the subsequent dissemination of its findings benefitted from the support of representatives from the National Institute of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Academy, and the Directorates of Biology and of Education and Human Resources within NSF. The current project is a follow up to the initial effort and fulfills a request by meeting attendees to determine the community's response to the meeting and its publications (both in print and on the web). Representatives of the United States Department of Agriculture have joined the group planning this meeting.Intellectual Merit: This project involves a large segment of the biology community. It is concerned with discovering how change occurs within biology undergraduate education and covers such topics as: what have faculty, institutions of higher education, and professional societies done in response to the widespread call for change; what were the outcomes of these actions for change; how were these outcomes documented; and has the unit of change included more than just one or two faculty members to involve a department or set of departments in a coordinated effort to change teaching approaches within courses and across the department. This sort of information can provide a useful base for educational researchers interested in describing change efforts in academia, as well as provide information to interested faculty and institutions on how to uccessfully institute new approaches in teaching their discipline. Broader Impact: The breadth of institutions, fields within biology, and faculty that are included speaks for the broader impact of this project. In addition AAAS serves all STEM disciplines so the publicity given this effort can result in other disciplines trying similar efforts to improve their approaches to undergraduate education. The original effort has already catalyzed an interest from the engineering community. The fact that recent published efforts by both the American Academy of Medical Colleges (as concerns the preparation of pre-medical and medical students) and the Educational Testing Service (as concerns AP Biology) mirror the concerns and suggestions within the original Vision and Change publication heightens community interest in the results of this seminal meeting.