Physics and Biology Partnership for a New Learning Environment

任何物理系的主要教学职责之一都是向攻读生命科学专业的学生教授基础物理学。然而，提供给生命科学专业学生的课程序列通常不是为了满足他们的需求而设计的，而是为了满足物理，数学和工程专业学生的需求而设计的一个版本（通常被淡化）。正如国家研究理事会的《生物2010》报告所指出的那样，这些课程往往没有提供了解生物学所需的基本物理知识，或者可能没有深入介绍。北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校的这个项目直接解决了这一问题，为生命科学专业的学生提供了一门考虑到他们的学科而设计的物理课程，使用讲座/工作室模型的研究验证的教学技术，以最大限度地提高学生的参与度。该项目正在为生命科学专业开设一系列入门课程，其内容和教学法旨在提高学生对物理概念的掌握和对概念与生物学相关性的理解，并提高他们应用这些概念解决复杂问题的能力。物理学天文学和生物学系之间的这种伙伴关系采用了“事物如何运作”的方法和课程的讲座/工作室模式，其中每个单元都以生物学“驱动问题”开始，并结合理解它所需的物理概念。这项工作的另一个目标是发展当地的教师学习社区，以促进在物理学和生物学的大型入门科学课程中使用基于研究的方法。这种跨学科的教学合作提高了教师在其他课程中的教学效率，并为其他机构的教学改革提供了跨学科合作的模式。

One of the primary instructional responsibilities of any physics department is to teach basic physics to students who are pursuing majors in the life sciences. However, the course sequence offered to life science students is typically not designed to serve their needs but is rather a version (often watered-down) of one designed to serve the needs of physics, mathematics, and engineering students. As noted in the BIO2010 report of the National Research Council, the basic physics knowledge needed to build an understanding of biology is often absent from such courses or may not be covered in depth. This project at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill addresses this concern directly, providing life-science students with a physics course designed with their discipline in mind, using the research-validated pedagogical techniques of the lecture/studio model to maximize student engagement. The project is creating an introductory course sequence for life science majors with content and pedagogy designed to improve the students' grasp of physics concepts and their understanding of the concepts' relevance to biology, as well as to improve their ability to apply those concepts to the solution of complex problems. This partnership between the Physics & Astronomy and Biology Departments adopts a "how things work" approach and a lecture/studio model for the courses, in which each unit begins with a biological "driving question" and incorporates the physics concepts necessary to understand it. Another goal of this work is the development of the local learning community of instructors to foster the use of research-based pedagogies in large introductory science classes in physics and biology. This collaboration across disciplines in teaching leads to improvement in the effectiveness of the instructors' teaching in other courses, and provides a model for interdisciplinary collaborations for pedagogical reforms for other institutions.