Coupling Mathematics and Life Science Courses

现代生物学的每一个领域都依赖于定量概念，但生命科学学生的定量训练很少与生物学联系在一起，许多生物学学生没有意识到它的相关性。该项目的目标是创建一个统一的课程，培养学生对生命科学问题的定量方法。该项目将把大学的统计学入门课程与普通生物学实验室课程结合起来，并为中学一级开发教学单元。该项目的长期效益和广泛意义的关键是将形成一个跨学科的，包括中学教师的教学圈。这个合作团队将通过承诺团结起来，从一个综合的，基于项目的，解决问题的方法来教授科学和数学。它汇集了教育和主题专家。在当地，该项目将修改波特兰大学和朴茨茅斯中学教授生物学和数学的方式。它将通过学生-教师安置和通过教育学院的大学教学方法课程影响未来的教师。由于将开发、现场测试、评估和传播结合统计学和普通生物学的灵活教学模块以及中学教学单元，因此该项目的成果将有助于国家层面科学/数学教育的系统性改革。

Every area of modern biology relies on quantitative concepts but the quantitative training of life science students is rarely connected to biology and many biology students fail to appreciate its relevance. The goal of this project is to create a unified curriculum which develops the students' quantitative approaches to problems in the life sciences. This project will couple an introductory statistics course with a general biology laboratory course at the University and develop teaching units for the middle school level. The key to the long term benefits and widespread significance of this project is that a teaching circle will be formed which is interdisciplinary and includes middle school teachers. This collaborative team will be united by commitment to teach science and mathematics from an integrated, project-based, problem-solving approach. It brings together education and subject matter experts. Locally, this project will revise the manner in which biology and mathematics are being taught at the University of Portland and Portsmouth Middle School. It will impact future teachers through student-teacher placements and through the University's teaching methods courses in the School of Education. Because flexible teaching modules which couple statistics and general biology and teaching units for middle schools will be developed, field tested, evaluated, and disseminated, the outcomes from this project will contribute to systemic reform of science/mathematics education at the national level.