Is it a doctor’s job to get the best outcomes for their patients or to tell the truth? What happens when these two things are not aligned? These are questions that University of Washington students have to wrangle with in Biol 180: Introductory Biology. The goal, says Elli Theobald, UW assistant professor of biology, is to have students experience a more nuanced side of biology. There is not always one right answer, and issues of power and relationships often come into play.
Theobald aims to connect the biology concepts the students learn in class to real-world issues, something she hopes will help both retain students in the biology major at the UW and help non-majors in the class with their future careers.
Just how common is it for biology curricula to include real-world examples? One way to answer this question is to look at educational resources for biology instructors.
In a recent paper published in Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research, Theobald and her team examined almost 3,000 science guidelines and assessment questions from 16 sources — including MCAT practice questions and questions from the Washington Comprehensive Assessment of Science and AP biology tests — for any connections to society. Of the approximately 200 elements — about 7% — that had real-world implications, many discussed ethics and public health issues.
UW News spoke with Theobald; lead author Carly Busch, UW postdoctoral fellow in biology; and co-author Madison Meuler, UW doctoral student in biology, to find out more about these results and what they mean for biology education today.
“If we’re teaching science in a way that makes it feel like it isn’t helping people, then we’re doing something wrong.”
Why do you think so few learning objectives and assessment questions were connected to real-world examples?
Carly Busch: One reason is probably that there’s a perception that real-world connections are not a part of the primary purpose of the course, that they only belong as an addendum or an aside.
This perception makes sense in some ways, given how departments and institutions have conceptualized biology and what biology undergraduate students expect to get out of a biology degree. But the lack of these connections to society was also remarkable, because I think they play a really important role in developing undergraduate students holistically and broadly as they continue on in their science careers. Real-world examples can support students’ interest in science and help them develop their scientific identity.
Madison Meuler: I think there is also a belief of, “Oh well, this is an intro biology class. If this person is going to be a scientist, they’ll get training in the societal stuff later.” But I think there’s value in having this type of information even in intro courses.
Students in these courses may or may not go on to major in biology, and may or may not pursue a career in STEM. But even if this is their only science course in college, what could they take away from it that can help them be an informed citizen in the world?
Science plays a huge role in politics and in a lot of decisions that affect people’s day-to-day lives. It’s a missed opportunity if you’re not making those connections in the classroom. We want students, regardless of their future careers, to at least walk away being equipped with some skills to critically analyze the role that science is playing in society.
You found that roughly half of the questions that did mention society only vaguely referenced real-world scenarios. Can you give examples of implicit versus explicit mentions?
CB: So the most vague mention was from the American Association of Immunologists’ recommendations for an undergraduate immunology course. This is one of the advanced subtopics that they list: the implications of Emil Von Behring’s discovery of diphtheria antitoxin. We coded it as a vague mention because some of those implications could be related to society, not only focused on scientific experiments.
An example of explicit incorporation is from the bioinformatics core competencies. It asks students to explain the implications, good and bad, of being able to walk into a doctor’s office and have your genome sequenced and analyzed, or of being able to obtain genetic information from direct-to-consumer testing services. There we have a very clear example of students being asked to think about how the science concept fits in with society.
Do you think that connecting science to society can help retain students in science?
CB: We haven’t tested this yet, but based on prior research, there is reason to believe that incorporating these connections is going to help students be more engaged in what they’re learning in class. Engagement is closely tied to students’ performance outcomes, which often make or break their decision to persist in a major.
There is also a theory that helping students apply what they’re learning in the classroom to things happening in their lives and in their communities really sets them up to be lifelong learners and engaged citizens.
This is something I am excited to study in the future — to understand how making these connections expands students’ perceptions of what science is and who does science. The types of research questions that most scientists ask are on topics they personally are interested in. Maybe they study wildflowers in Washington because they love hiking, and they’ve always been struck by how beautiful the flowers are. That’s the beauty of being an academic researcher: You get to explore all of the different things that you’re curious about.
MM: Connecting content to real-world experiences could also increase retention by helping students feel a sense of belonging in the classroom. You’re far less likely to persist in a class if you feel like you don’t belong in that physical space, right? The course content definitely plays a role in that.
I think that making these connections between content and societal issues could help students start thinking things like, “Oh, this is a thing I care about, how could I design a study that could provide evidence to help inform a policy decision?”
Elli Theobald: Students have said to me, “I don’t want to be a scientist because I want to help people.” And that’s a problem. If we’re teaching science in a way that makes it feel like it isn’t helping people, then we’re doing something wrong. It’s just such a huge disservice to biology because we’ll lose so many amazing and capable students who could push our field forward.
This study looked at biology education resources. Do you know if biology instructors are already incorporating more real-world connections in their courses?
CB: If instructors aren’t getting support but they’re still making these connections in the classroom, it’s because they are putting that onus on themselves and choosing to add it. I applaud all instructors who are making these connections, and I fully expect that more connections are being made than what we have found in textbooks and in these resources. We are currently collecting actual course materials from intro bio courses to see where instructors are making these connections.
But I also think that it would be such a valuable resource for instructors to have more support in making those connections. Here’s where I think really bolstering the amount of resources for instructors could provide more scaffolding for instructors to be able to provide a variety of connections, or to even recognize opportunities to make these connections in the course objectives. One of my hopes for this work is that it helps to provide motivation for those sorts of materials.
ET: Instructors are amazing. They’re working so hard to connect the content in some way to students’ lives, or to find the best, coolest examples. They need to have support from their institutions to be able to do more of this in their classrooms.
This research was funded by The National Science Foundation.
For more information, contact Theobald atellij@uw.edu Busch at cbusch3@uw.edu and Meuler at mmeuler@uw.edu.