Amplifying Humanistic and Meta Knowledge in the Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences
Joshua Caulkins, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus; KARIN ELLISON, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus; Ben Hurlbut, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus; Kate MacCord, Arizona State University; Amy Pate, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus; Christian Wright, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
Description
The Biological Sciences Degree Program at Arizona State University is in the midst of a revolution. Through institutional support at the level of the Director of the School of Life Sciences, the core courses required of undergraduates in this major are being reviewed and realigned to cutting-edge pedagogical standards, 21st century skills, and national standards for knowledge. Amidst this culture of change, we envision a change in STEM education that provides students with an education that robustly integrates humanistic, meta, and foundational knowledge in order to better prepare them for their lives as professionals and citizens. This project highlights the incorporation of humanistic and meta knowledge into the Biological Sciences Degree Program.
Rationale
Science, technology, and medicine, particularly in the life sciences, are essential to the fabric of modern life. If the life sciences and (bio)technology, or science and technology generally, are to respond to the grand challenges of the 21st century, those challenges must also be understood to include humanistic and meta knowledge. While a minority of life sciences majors will hold careers in life sciences, including biomedical and ecological professions, all will need to thrive in the 21st century as individuals, professionals, and citizens, and to live in societies in which life sciences and technologies are of ever-increasing importance. Therefore, a 21st century life sciences education must reach beyond textbook scientific knowledge to embrace the social contexts, purposes, and aspirations. We must recognize that humanistic and meta knowledge are fundamental components of research and innovation in the medical and life sciences. We must give students the foundations to critically reflect upon, debate about, and articulate well-developed views on the societal context and significance of advances in the life sciences. Undergraduate biology education should integrate foundational knowledge, values, and their significance for action and cultivate capacities of empathy, critical engagement, ethical reflection, and robust expression and communication. The proposed program of curricular reform within the Biological Sciences Degree Program offers a model for this form of integration.
The curricular reform brings together national aspirations in undergraduate life sciences education with particular foci and strengths of the School of Life Sciences. An important starting place nationally is AAAS’s “Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action” (2011). In addition to calling for a reconceptualization of the foundational knowledge needed for students of the life sciences, this nationally recognized statement points to the need to integrate humanistic and meta knowledge into the life sciences. Core Competency 6 — “[a]bility to understand the relationship between science and society: Biology is conducted in a societal context” — particularly focuses on humanistic knowledge. In addition, a large and long standing body of work at the intersection of history, philosophy, and social studies of science and life sciences education has recast “nature of science” learning outcomes in this framework.
Context within ASU’s School of Life Sciences
Within the School of Life Sciences, faculty clusters bring depth of knowledge in both biology in societal context (BSC) and biology education to this enterprise. Humanistic and meta knowledge is represented by the Center for Biology and Society, which integrates history, philosophy, science studies, ethical and other humanistic and social science perspectives with biology. Drawing on the AAAS language and our Center for Biology and Society we frequently refer to the humanistic and meta elements of knowledge as BSC.
Goals of the Program
- Provide students with an education that robustly integrates humanistic, meta, and foundational knowledge in order to better prepare them for their lives as professionals and citizens.
- Create means for innovation in curricular design and assessment that ensure that students graduate with appropriate skills and knowledge bases in humanistic and meta knowledge.
Learning Outcomes
- Students will apply their foundational, humanistic, and meta knowledge to perform a critical analysis . In particular, students should be able to analyze…
- …what counts as knowledge. (epistemology)
- …how professional practices, cultures, and norms shape scientific knowledge. (social studies of science)
- …how broader socio-cultural, economic, political, and historical context shape science, technology, and medicine. (history)
- …how / whether developments in science and technology are good/bad, ethical/unethical, desirable/undesirable, and by whom and in what terms. (ethics)
- Students will be able to effectively communicate and collaborate about problems related to science, technology, and medicine in social contexts.
- Students will demonstrate that they value the humanistic axes and be actively engaged and inquisitive about them.
Assessing Program Outcomes
We have developed an outline for our program level assessments:
- Students will produce a portfolio of their work across the revised courses.
- Student progress will be assessed through evaluation of their portfolios throughout their degree programs.
- Courses will be evaluated for their humanistic and meta knowledge through a rubric.
- Administration of surveys capturing values and attitudes towards, and knowledge of humanistic and meta knowledge at the beginning and end of the degree program, with the possibility of interim assessments.
Detailed Description of the Program
We plan to infuse humanistic and meta knowledge into the Biological Sciences degree program within the School of Life Sciences (SOLS) at Arizona State University, Tempe. The content will be delivered through a series of learning experiences that emphasize communication, collaboration, problem solving, and critical analysis within existing required courses. There will also be a student incentive (a digital credential) to select a humanistic capstone course, one of several that are currently offered, and that course will also fulfill an upper level elective requirement for the students. A vision for long-term implementation of this initiative is to work within the unit to revise the requirements for the Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences such that a Biology in Societal Context (BSC) capstone course is required.
Biological Sciences Degree Program at Arizona State - Tempe
Joshua Caulkins, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus; KARIN ELLISON, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus; Ben Hurlbut, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus; Kate MacCord, Arizona State University; Amy Pate, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus; Christian Wright, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
Description
We plan to infuse humanistic and meta knowledge into the Biological Sciences Degree Program within the School of Life Sciences (SOLS) at Arizona State University, Tempe. The content will be delivered through a series of learning experiences that emphasize communication, collaboration, problem solving, and critical analysis within existing required courses that provide foundational knowledge. The Biological Sciences Degree Program has four core courses that all students are required to take: General Biology I & II, Genetics, and Evolution. These courses comprise Tiers 1 & 2a. Tier 2b will incorporate elements into the Upper Division Major Requirements. For Tier 3, there will be a student incentive (a digital credential) to select a full 3-credit humanistic course, one of several that are currently offered, and that course will also fulfill an upper level elective requirement for the students. A vision for long-term implementation of this initiative is to work within the unit to revise the requirements for the Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences such that a Biology in Societal Context (BSC) capstone course is required.
In order to infuse humanistic and meta knowledge into the extant curriculum, we have devised a system of four axes: (1) epistemology, (2) social studies of science, (3) history, and (4) ethics. These axes are represented in the diagram on the right.
Specifically, infusion of BSC content into the Biological Sciences degree has three tiers which integrate humanistic and meta knowledge across our four axes (above). The three tiers follow student learning developmental stages: Introducing, Reinforcing, and Mastering. Students will grapple with increasingly difficult concepts and work collaborative to demonstrate their level of proficiency at each tier.
| Tier 1 (Introducing) | Intro Courses: BIO 181 (General Biology I) and BIO 182 (General Biology II) | Students will be introduced to thinking in all four axes. (see link to the Spreadsheet below for details) |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 2a (Reinforcing) | Core Courses: BIO 340 (Genetics) and BIO 345 (Evolution) | The two Core Courses will each incorporate two of the axes, and will cumulatively cover all four axes. |
| Tier 2b (Reinforcing) |
Upper Division Major Requirements, including but not limited to:
|
Each Upper Division Major Requirement course will incorporate two of the four axes |
| Tier 3 (Mastery) |
The capstone to the meta and humanistic knowledge thread will be for students to select a BSC course as one of their Upper Division Electives. Possible courses include:
|
The Upper Division Elective will provide a deep-dive into at least one of the axes. |
In Tier 1, students in BIO 181 and BIO 182, our General Biology course sequence, will have two to three lessons in Biology in Societal Context (BSC). These lessons will amplify a piece of the existing curriculum to introduce students to the BSC learning outcomes. Students are introduced to the ideas and arguments that underlie BSC. Students will be expected to identify ideas or arguments from the four axes.
In Tier 2a, students in BIO 340 (Genetics) and BIO 345 (Evolution) will have the four axes of BSC areas reinforced. Each course will provide depth in these two disciplines (Genetics and Evolution), and students will be able to use foundation frameworks in these axes to reflect on how the frameworks have impacted and shaped the discipline.
In Tier 2b, students will engage with two of the four key axes of BSC knowledge, and work with those concepts to reinforce what they have learned in Tiers 1 and 2a. Each course will provide additional opportunities for students to reflect on how the frameworks have impacted and shaped the disciplines.
In Tier 3, students will apply their foundational, humanistic, and meta knowledge, and synthesize literature, case studies, and/or resources to, for example, perform a critical analysis of a phenomenon (e.g., disease, research, society challenge, etc.) with the goal of discussing how various individuals, organizations, or political forces shaped this process.
Evaluation of student proficiency or mastery at each tier, with foci on communication/collaboration and/or problem solving/critical analysis skills, could include any of the following: group and individual projects, portfolios, essays, reports, data analysis, case studies, critique, argument construction or deconstruction, debate, formal presentations, worksheets, town hall discussions, etc. Students would be provided with rubrics for all assignments, providing explicit statements on expectations for student performance levels.
For a deeper dive into how we plan to incorporate these axes and learning activities into our current degree program, please see this excel file: SOLS Spreadsheet (Excel 2007 (.xlsx) 13kB Oct9 20)
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant #1935479: Workshop on the Substance of STEM Education. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.