Physics and Biology Partnership for a New Learning Environment

任何物理系的主要教学职责之一是向正在攻读生命科学专业的学生教授基础物理。然而，为生命科学学生提供的课程序列通常不是为满足他们的需求而设计的，而是为满足物理、数学和工程专业学生的需求而设计的版本(往往被淡化)。正如国家研究理事会2010年生物信息学报告指出的那样，建立对生物学的理解所需的基本物理知识往往没有出现在这些课程中，或者可能没有深入讨论。北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校的这个项目直接解决了这一问题，为生命科学专业的学生提供了一门考虑到他们的学科的物理课程，使用经研究验证的讲座/工作室模式的教学技术，以最大限度地提高学生的参与度。该项目正在为生命科学专业的学生创建入门课程序列，内容和教学法旨在提高学生对物理概念的掌握和对这些概念与生物学相关性的理解，以及提高他们将这些概念应用于解决复杂问题的能力。物理与天文学系与生物系之间的这种合作关系采用了“事物是如何工作的”方法和讲座/工作室的课程模式，每个单元从一个生物“驱动力问题”开始，并结合了理解它所需的物理概念。这项工作的另一个目标是发展当地教师学习社区，以促进在物理和生物的大型科学入门课程中使用研究性教学。这种跨学科的教学合作提高了教师在其他课程中的教学效率，并为其他机构的教学改革提供了一个跨学科合作的模式。

One of the primary instructional responsibilities of any physics department is to teach basic physics to students who are pursuing majors in the life sciences. However, the course sequence offered to life science students is typically not designed to serve their needs but is rather a version (often watered-down) of one designed to serve the needs of physics, mathematics, and engineering students. As noted in the BIO2010 report of the National Research Council, the basic physics knowledge needed to build an understanding of biology is often absent from such courses or may not be covered in depth. This project at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill addresses this concern directly, providing life-science students with a physics course designed with their discipline in mind, using the research-validated pedagogical techniques of the lecture/studio model to maximize student engagement. The project is creating an introductory course sequence for life science majors with content and pedagogy designed to improve the students' grasp of physics concepts and their understanding of the concepts' relevance to biology, as well as to improve their ability to apply those concepts to the solution of complex problems. This partnership between the Physics & Astronomy and Biology Departments adopts a "how things work" approach and a lecture/studio model for the courses, in which each unit begins with a biological "driving question" and incorporates the physics concepts necessary to understand it. Another goal of this work is the development of the local learning community of instructors to foster the use of research-based pedagogies in large introductory science classes in physics and biology. This collaboration across disciplines in teaching leads to improvement in the effectiveness of the instructors' teaching in other courses, and provides a model for interdisciplinary collaborations for pedagogical reforms for other institutions.