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

本计划建立生物学家和艺术家的跨学科网络，以发展和实施将艺术表达与生物学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强化教学的认知和学术效益的基础上，以提高不同学生的创造力、课程参与度和概念理解能力：传统的和非传统的，生物专业的和非专业的。该项目的基本原理源于两种国家趋势。首先，大学生正变得越来越“非传统”，与传统学生相比，这些学生的学位完成率更低，融入大学生活的难度也更大。其次，这项提案是对最近国家咨询机构呼吁将生物学和科学教育与艺术和人文学科结合起来的回应，并强调大学毕业生是具有科学素养的社会成员。为了吸引具有不同学习偏好的不同学生，本项目强调生物概念的具体、直接表达，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、创造性的方式解读和表达课程材料，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学生的课程体验。本项目有两个主要目标：建立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的艺术强化教学方法和技术，并通过艺术强化教学提高生物专业和非专业学生的课程参与度和概念理解能力。为了实现第一个目标，该网络将举行一系列会议，制定可行的提高艺术水平的课程材料，以及适当的评估方法和项目评价指标。将在四所机构（两所hsi、一所以教学为重点的大学和一所国际机构，其中包括通过美洲原住民教育中心提供的课程）实施十门艺术强化生物学课程和十门非艺术强化生物学课程；非专业三门，专业七门。主修课程包括初级（普通生物学）和高级（无脊椎动物学、生态学、细胞生物学和微生物学）生物学。形成性评估将评估网络开发和实施将艺术融入生物课程的过程，总结性评估将通过学生课程参与度和概念理解的评估数据来检查实施的结果。该项目由生物基础设施司生物科学理事会资助，作为应对《本科生物学教育的愿景与变革：行动呼吁》（http://visionandchange/finalreport/）所提出的挑战的努力的一部分。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。

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.