Progress Report to the National Science Foundation on Grant DUE-9752339 Alternative Routes to Quantitative Literacy for the Life Sciences Submitted by: Principal Investigator: Louis J. Gross (gross@tiem.utk.edu). Co-Principal Investigators: Beth C. Mullin and Susan E. Riechert The Institute for Environmental Modeling and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-1610 August 20, 1999 Investigators and their affiliations: L. J. Gross, The Institute for Environmental Modeling and Departments of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics; Beth C. Mullin, Department of Botany; Susan E. Riechert, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Otto J. Schwarz, Department of Botany; Monica Beals, Grad Student, Ecology; Susan Harrell, Grad Student, Mathematics. Brief description of efforts on this project over the past year: Quantitative Competency Exams: There were several project components under development over this first year of funded effort. First, a quantitative competency examination was developed specifically to evaluate the quantitative skills of students taking the general biology sequence for science majors. This exam was developed based upon the skills and concepts that Dr. Mullin thought appropriate for students taking the Organization and Function of the Cell component of the general biology sequence. The exam was given at the beginning of the semester to students in all sections of the course, and a retest was given at the end of the semester. Results were compared between students in Dr. Mullin's class, in which a preliminary effort was made to illustrate quantitative concepts appropriate to certain portions of the course material, and students in other sections taught by faculty without any particular emphasis on quantitative concepts. Dr. Mullin emphasized quantitative concepts in lectures, included quantitative problems on class exams, and encouraged students to work on understanding the problems on the competency exam. Student test scores at the end of the semester increased dramatically from those at the beginning of the semester in Dr. Mullin's course, while they did not change at all for the other sections. Although this clearly demonstates the capability for student's basic comprehension of quantitative ideas to improve during a science course without explicit instruction in quantitative concepts, there were explicit incentives to improve given to students in Dr. Mullin's class that were not present in the other course sections. Data and Figures describing the results are in a poster that provides an overview of the project on the project home page at: http://www.tiem.utk.edu/bioed/ Primer of Quantitative Biology: A second major component of the project involves the development of a Primer of Quantitative Biology designed to accompany a general biology sequence. The objective is to provide, for each standard section of such a course sequence, a set of short, self-contained examples of how quantitative approaches have taught us something new in that area of biology. We are aiming most examples towards high-school level math, though there will be calculus and above examples included throughout as well. A standard format for each module was established and a draft collection of over 35 modules have been developed to date. These have all been made available through the project home page. As development of these modules were ongoing during the first year of the project, they have not yet been used (except for a few that Dr. Mullin discussed in the Cell Biology course) in a course setting. After discussion with several potential publishers, it was decided that the Primer would have two components. The beginning of the Primer will consist of brief reviews of basic mathematical concepts, mainly at a high school level, that are essential to understanding the basic quantitative literature in biology. These will be discussed completely with biological examples and linked in detail to the second part of the Primer which will consist of the modules described above. The full text would be published as hard-copy by a commercial publisher, while the majority of the modules (perhaps all of them) would be available for free individual use on the web. Dissemination: Several activities/talks were given over the first year that included aspects of the effort on this project. These include: Mathematics Awareness Month, a project of the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics, this year focused on Mathematical Biology. As part of this, Dr. Gross wrote two essays which were posted on special page of the Mathematics Awareness Month Home Page, located at the Mathematics Forum Site at http://forum.swarthmore.edu/mam/ and Dr. Gross also organized the Mathematics Awareness day activities at UTK focused on high school students. Information on the Day's activities are at: http://www.tiem.utk.edu/~gross/mam.html NSF Chautauqua Course "Quantitative Life Science Education: Preparing Fearless Biologists". Presented by Dr. Gross at Christian Brothers University, Memphis, TN on June 17-19, 1999 at no cost to this project. This included detailed descriptions of the efforts on this project, copies of modules provided to the Course participants, and feedback from the participants (all of whom were college mathematics or biology faculty) on these modules was obtained. Special Session on Education in Mathematical Biology, chaired by Dr. Gross at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Mathematical Biology at the Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 29-July 3, 1999 at no cost to this project. Dr. Gross presented a paper on the project "Quantitative Training in the Life Sciences: Designing an Undergraduate Curriculum in Computational Biology", and led a separate group discussion on mathematics for biology students. Poster presented by Susan Harrell at the Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America, Spokane, Washington, August 9, 1999, partially supported by this project. Poster title was "Improving the quantitative skills of life sciences students through General Biology reform" and provided a summary of the efforts on this project. Poster content is available on the project home page. Home Page: In addition to basic information about the project and the collection of modules developed, this contains a page with an extensive collection of links to ongoing reform projects in General Biology education developed as an aid to this project. It also contains links to a wide variety of ongoing projects devoted to quantitative training in the life sciences, developed in collaboration with the Education Committee of the Society for Mathematical Biology. Location is http://www.tiem.utk.edu/bioed/ Activities for Second Year of the Project: The major efforts will be: 1. Completion of a first draft of the Primer of Quantitative Biology. This will include the development of additional modules particularly in the areas of Ecology and Evolution. 2. Use of the modules in the Biodiversity component of the general biology sequence taught by Dr. Riechert during Fall semester. This will include the competency evaluation and the evaluation of course materials. Additionally, specific modules will be developed to link with the the laboratory component of this course. 3. Use of the modules in the Cell Biology component of the general biology sequence by Dr. Schwarz in conjunction with efforts to modify the laboratory component of this course to further enhance the quantitative concepts and skills expected of students.