Biology in a Human Context: A New Course for Non-Science Majors

越来越明显的是，今天的公民必须具备生物学素养，才能做出影响我们个人和集体的明智决定。他们往往不是这样的。我们项目的目的是通过改善两年制和四年制大学非理科专业本科生的生物学教育来应对这一挑战。这将首先在我们自己的两年制和四年制学院实施，然后扩大到通过分享我们所学到的和所取得的成就来鼓励其他学院和大学。具体目标是为非理科专业学生创建、充分开发和实施一门新的、创新的、为期一年的生物学入门课程，名为：人类语境中的生物学。为了实现这一目标，来自辛辛那提大学所有六个提供生物课程的学术单位的现有教职员工团队正在与大学学术技术中心、教育学院、跨课程写作办公室和普通教育委员会的教职员工合作。这门课程将由生物学教师在各自的单元中教授，并将满足大学和普通教育自然科学的要求。其中包括四年制、两年制和两年制、四年制大学，每年有1000多名本科生，其中包括许多准备教授K-8年级的职前教师。同时主修生物的职前中学教师将担任教学助理。新课程在内容和教学方法上都将与现有的传统课程有很大的不同，如果经过仔细评估确定成功，它最终将取代传统课程。

It is increasingly obvious that today's citizens must be biologically literate to make informed decisions affecting us individually and collectively. Too often they are not. The aim of our project is to address this challenge by improving undergraduate biology education for non-science majors in two-year and four-year colleges. This will first be effected in our own two and four year colleges, and then expanded to encourage other colleges and universities by sharing what we have learned and accomplished. The specific goal is to create, fully develop, and implement a new and innovative year long introductory biology course for non-science majors entitled: Biology in a Human Context. To meet this goal, an already existing team of faculty from all six academic units at the University of Cincinnati which offer biology courses are working with faculty and staff from the University Center for Academic Technologies, the College of Education, the Office of Writing Across the Curriculum, and the General Education Council. The course will be taught by the biology faculty in their respective units, and will fulfill both the Collegiate and General Education natural science requirements. Included are four, two-year and two, four-year colleges involving over 1,000 undergraduates annually, including many pre-service teachers who are preparing to teach grades K-8. Pre-service secondary teachers who are also biology majors will act as instructional assistants. The new course will be a significant departure in both content and pedagogy from the existing traditional one, which it will eventually replace if determined to be successful through careful evaluation.