Changing Student Misconceptions about Evolution through an Innovative Laboratory Curriculum in Biological Anthropology

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There is a solid body of evidence documenting significant misconceptions about evolution among college students before and even after instruction in the life sciences. Researchers have attempted to evaluate and address such misconceptions in evolution-based courses at the college level, but only with mixed success. There is still a need to develop and test tools and methods to help students gain an accurate understanding of evolution. This project is creating, using, and evaluating an innovative laboratory curriculum for an introductory biological anthropology course to address and correct misconceptions about evolution. It is using a student-centered and inquiry-based approach that challenges students to apply the core theory and concepts of evolution and biological anthropology specifically, and to engage actively in solving problems using scientific methods. The project is teaching evolution as an active process. This approach is designed to help students understand how evolution occurs in a human context. The project is engaging students actively with DNA /molecular and other laboratory evidence that are integrated with other course materials. This approach embeds evolutionary challenges fully and explicitly throughout the semester and focuses almost entirely on human examples as appropriate to biological anthropology.