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课程来服务于国家利益。 该项目将开发，测试和出版一系列核心概念教学工具（CCTTs），教学生如何跨尺度和子学科转移生物学核心概念的知识，以了解新颖而复杂的生物现象。愿景与变革（V C）报告（AAAS，2011）确定了生物学的五个核心概念，并呼吁本科生物学教师使用这些概念来连接他们的教学和学生的学习跨越生物尺度和子学科。该报告强调，有必要让本科生物学学生做好准备，为新兴的跨学科领域做出贡献，通过建立他们在看似不同的信息，概念和问题之间建立联系的能力来解决复杂的问题。然而，目前可用的教学工具主要集中在子学科背景下的核心概念的教学。作为该项目的一部分，开发的CCT将满足教学工具的需求，教学生跨尺度和子学科转移核心概念知识。该项目将把跨尺度和子学科专业知识的生物教育工作者聚集在一起，参与教师学习社区，开发，测试和发布一系列CCT在CourseSource。每个CCTT将以描述复杂生物学现象的简短叙述开始开始。叙述之后的活动和问题将使用Branchaw和卡里的概念元素框架（2017）构建，以引导学生通过识别叙述中的核心概念元素，回忆他们已经了解到的关于这些核心概念元素的过程，并应用他们的先验知识来理解叙述中描述的新现象。大约45个CCT将被开发，并在全国各地的不同机构进行试点测试，然后在CourseSource上发布。教师将能够通过子学科，核心概念和概念元素搜索CourseSource数据库中的CCT，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STEM教育的有效性。该奖项反映了NSF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 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.