Developing Teaching Tools to Promote Transfer of Core Concept Knowledge Across Biological Scales and Sub-disciplines.

该项目旨在通过改进生物教育的课程来服务于国家利益。这个项目将开发、测试和出版一套核心概念教学工具(CCTT)，教会学生如何跨尺度和子学科传递他们的生物学核心概念知识，以理解新的和复杂的生物现象。愿景与变革(V&Amp；C)报告(AAAS，2011)确定了生物学中的五个核心概念，并呼吁本科生生物学教师使用这些概念将他们的教学和学生的学习联系起来，跨越生物范围和子学科。该报告强调，需要培养本科生为新兴的跨学科领域做出贡献，这些领域通过培养他们在看似不同的信息、概念和问题上建立联系的能力来解决复杂问题。然而，目前可用的教学工具主要集中在分学科背景下教授核心概念。作为这个项目的一部分开发的CCTTS将解决教学工具的需求，教会学生跨尺度和子学科传递核心概念知识。该项目将把具有跨尺度和子学科专业知识的生物学教育工作者聚集在一起，参与教师学习社区，以开发、测试和发布CourseSource中的CCTT集合。每一篇CCTT将以一个简短的叙述开始，描述一个复杂的生物现象。叙事之后的活动和问题将使用Branchaw和Cary的概念元素框架(2017)来指导学生识别叙事中的核心概念元素，回忆他们已经学到的关于这些核心概念元素的知识，并应用他们的先前知识来理解叙事中描述的小说现象。大约45个CCTT将被开发出来，并在全国各地的不同机构进行试点测试，然后在CourseSource上发表。讲师将能够在CourseSource数据库中搜索CCTTS的子学科、核心概念和概念元素，并免费下载。NSF IUSE：EDU计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生的STEM教育的有效性。通过参与的学生学习路径，该计划支持有前景的实践和工具的创建、探索和实施。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving curricula in biology education. This project will develop, test, and publish a collection of Core Concept Teaching Tools (CCTTs) that teach students how to transfer their knowledge of biology core concepts across scales and sub-disciplines to understand novel and complex biological phenomena. The Vision and Change (V&C) report (AAAS, 2011) identified five core concepts in biology and called on undergraduate biology instructors to use these concepts to connect their teaching and their students’ learning across biological scales and subdisciplines. The report highlighted the need to prepare undergraduate biology students to contribute to emerging interdisciplinary fields that address complex problems by building their ability to make connections across seemingly disparate pieces of information, concepts, and questions. However, currently available instructional tools primarily focus on teaching core concepts in sub-disciplinary contexts. The CCTTs developed as part of this project will address the need for instructional tools that teach students to transfer core concept knowledge across scales and subdisciplines.The project will bring biology educators with expertise across scales and sub-disciplines together to participate in faculty learning communities to develop, test, and publish a collection of CCTTs in CourseSource. Each CCTT will begin with a brief narrative describing a complex biological phenomenon. The activities and questions following the narrative will be constructed using Branchaw and Cary’s Conceptual Elements Framework (2017) to guide students through the process of recognizing the core concept elements in the narrative, recalling what they have already learned about those core concept elements, and applying their prior knowledge to understand the novel phenomenon described in the narrative. Approximately 45 CCTTs will be developed, and pilot tested at diverse institutions across the nation, before they are published in CourseSource. Instructors will be able to search the CourseSource database for CCTTs by subdisciplines, core concepts, and conceptual elements, and download them for free. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.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.