RCN-UBE Incubator: Biology through art: an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to teaching biology

RCN-UBE 孵化器：通过艺术实现生物学：一种创新的跨学科生物学教学方法

• 批准号: 2120607
• 负责人: Michael Maxwell
• 金额: $ 6.75万
• 依托单位: National University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-10-01 至 2023-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2120607&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RCN; UBE; Incubator; Biology; through

This project establishes an interdisciplinary network of biologists and artists to develop and implement teaching practices that integrate artistic expression with biology education. This approach builds on the demonstrated cognitive and academic benefits of art-enhanced instruction in biology courses to increase creativity, course engagement, and concept comprehension by diverse students: traditional and non-traditional, and biology majors and non-majors. This project’s rationale is rooted in two national trends. First, undergraduate students are becoming increasingly “non-traditional”, and these students show lower degree completion rates and more difficulty integrating into university life than their traditional counterparts. Second, this proposal is a response to recent calls from national advisory bodies for the integration of education in biology and the sciences with the arts and humanities, as well as emphasis on the college graduate as a scientifically literate member of society. To engage diverse students with diverse learning preferences, this project emphasizes concrete, immediate expression of concepts in biology, and encourages thinking about concepts from diverse perspectives. By providing opportunities for students to interpret and express course material in personal, creative ways, this project addresses the achievement gap faced by non-traditional students and enriches the course experience of biology majors and non-majors. This project has two main objectives: establish a collaborative network of biologists and artists to develop and implement methods and techniques of art-enhanced instruction in undergraduate biology courses and increase course engagement and concept comprehension among biology-majors and non-majors through art-enhanced instruction. To achieve the first objective, the network will hold a series of meetings to develop feasible art-enhanced course material, as well as appropriate assessment approaches and metrics for project evaluation. Ten art-enhanced biology instruction and ten non-art-enhanced biology courses will be implemented at four institutions (two HSIs, a teaching-focused university, and an international institution that includes programs offered through a Native American education center); three courses for non-majors and seven for majors. Major courses will include lower level (General Biology) and upper level (Invertebrate Zoology, Ecology, Cell Biology, and Microbiology) biology. Formative evaluation will assess the processes through which the network develops and implements the integration of artwork in biology courses and summative evaluation will examine the outcomes of implementation through assessment data on student course engagement and concept comprehension. This project is being funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure, as part of efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (http://visionandchange/finalreport/).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该项目建立了一个生物学家和艺术家的跨学科网络，以开发和实施将艺术表达与生物教育相结合的教学实践。 这种方法建立在生物学课程中艺术增强教学的认知和学术优势的基础上，以提高不同学生的创造力，课程参与度和概念理解力：传统和非传统，生物学专业和非专业。 该项目的基本原理植根于两个国家趋势。 首先，本科生正变得越来越“非传统”，这些学生的学位完成率较低，融入大学生活的难度也比传统学生大。 第二，这项建议是对国家咨询机构最近呼吁将生物学和科学教育与艺术和人文科学相结合，以及强调大学毕业生作为社会科学素养成员的回应。 为了吸引具有不同学习偏好的不同学生，该项目强调生物学概念的具体、即时表达，并鼓励从不同角度思考概念。 通过为学生提供机会，以个人的，创造性的方式解释和表达课程材料，该项目解决了非传统学生面临的成绩差距，丰富了生物专业和非专业的课程经验。 该项目有两个主要目标：建立一个生物学家和艺术家的合作网络，以开发和实施本科生物学课程中艺术增强教学的方法和技术，并通过艺术增强教学提高生物学专业和非专业学生的课程参与度和概念理解。 为了实现第一个目标，该网络将举行一系列会议，以制定可行的艺术强化课程材料，以及适当的评估方法和项目评估指标。 十个艺术增强生物学教学和十个非艺术增强生物学课程将在四个机构（两个HSIs，一个以教学为重点的大学和一个国际机构，包括通过美洲原住民教育中心提供的课程）实施;三门课程为非专业和七门专业。主要课程将包括较低水平（普通生物学）和较高水平（无脊椎动物学，生态学，细胞生物学和微生物学）生物学。 形成性评价将评估网络开发和实施生物课程中艺术品整合的过程，总结性评价将通过学生课程参与和概念理解的评估数据来检查实施结果。 该项目由生物基础设施部生物科学理事会资助，作为应对本科生物学教育中的愿景和变革所带来的挑战的努力的一部分：行动呼吁（http：//visionandchange/finalreport/）。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。