This packet contains a set of 24 practice questions and 2 full-length practice assessments for the Quantitative Reasoning Assessment for Wellesley College. 

An online journal focusing upon generally-applicable studies of cell biology.

This course in the Numbers Count! curriculum introduces the basics of statistical analysis, including basic definitions, data visualization, and application. 

In this activity, students learn about ancient plant life and climate change by examining coal balls. In addition to the lesson itself, information is provided on where to purchase coal ball peel kits for hands-on experience. 

This lesson introduces the use of GIS (geographic information systems) in the study of biological questions, using bats as the model organism. This activity requires access to GIS software. 

Designed to span 4 one-hour lectures, this module focuses upon developing the skill of thorough and critical reading of scientific literature. 

Module Summary: The production of crops is essential to human life. Producing these crops, however, comes with it a cost to the environment. The commonly used agricultural techniques in place in the United States rely on machinery and chemicals in order to keep up with the demand. However, over time, these methods strip the soil of nutrients which in turn require added inputs to produce the crops in the first place. In order to continue to produce crops at current levels of need and, by extension, to increase production, methods to counter these deficiencies must be utilized. One of these methods, used in both organic and 4conventional" agriculture, is that of crop rotation. Crop rotation may be as simple as the current corn/bean rotation in the conventional system, or more elegantly implemented with organic techniques such as intercropping, 4green manure,! and 4catch cropping.! Certain crops have characteristics which lend themselves to rotation. These crops are then rotated with crops which provide income or fodder for animals. However, the creation of a rotational schedule over a plot of subdivided land is a challenge which faces the agriculturist in planning the most efficient use of land so that demand is met, soils are sustained, and economic impact is reduced when leaving land off of a 4production schedule.! The module develops discrete mathematics models that allow for creation of schedules meeting a variety of needs.

In this module, we integrate the context of carbon emission and human consumption into an introductory lesson on units and estimation. Background information is provided to familiarize students with the science of carbon emissions as well as greenhouse gas effects on mean global temperatures.

In this module the students will learn some basic concepts in statistical thinking about data, with emphasis on exploratory data analysis. The module will analyze daily temperature data collected over 55 years at a single location. The analysis explores the question, 4Is there any observable temperature trend over this time period at this location?! The challenge is to see a potentially small change within a data set that has both seasonal variability and high daily variability. Basic plots are done to help the students view data in different ways, introduce methods for removing seasonality, and use averaging to reduce day-to-day variability. This module might be viewed as a case study! in data analysis. It will give students a taste of what it's like to do real world data analysis. Students will work with a large noisy data set and look at it in different ways to try to answer a specific question.

This module uses a variety of available datasets to explore methods of calculating biodiversity and measuring landscape as well as the relationship between those. These points are then used to teach logarithms by estimating slopes and intercepts from a log-log plot of the number of species in a given location against a variety of metrics including island size and distance from mainland. Optionally, this could then be adapted to fragmented habitats near a national park or the like. Finally, the plots are used to estimate the level of fragmentation that would push the system to a given level of species loss.

We based our instructional unit on the premise that many people have, that one does not need mathematics if the they do not plan on attending college or pursuing careers known for involving mathematics. A huge misconception many students have is that mathematics has no relevance in the blue-collar industry. The goals of this lesson are to dispell this myth, to demonstrate, explore and discuss mathematics through a field operation, and through investigative activities to extend the concepts from the farm to general mathmematics with the use of technology. We will use a field trip to a local Dairy Farm, Gilbert and Sons Dairy Farm, to achieve these goals.

Lecture  Slides

This is a Powerpoint presentation which motivated a panel discussion on "What Makes Networks Work?" at the RCN-UBE Summit at AAAS in January 2016.

A presentation given by Laurel Anderson on EREN (Ecological Research and Education Network) contributions to science, given at the RCN-UBE meeting in January 2016.

Lecture  Slides

This site links to the meeting reports as well as individual papers submitted by attendees at the conference. 

"The diagnostic question clusters (DQC's) created for this project are designed to help professors unpack their students' understanding of biological and ecological processes, identifying smaller scale problems that limit large scale understanding. In particular these DQC's identify levels of student reasoning about matter and energy transformations occurring during these processes."

CI's on various topics from San Diego State University.

beSocratic is a tool not specifically related to CI's, but is a helpful tool nonetheless. 

"BeSocratic is an online assessment system focused on addressing these two goals, i.e. providing students with proper feedback and teachers with meaningful analysis. On the student side, BeSocratic is able to recognize student drawings and respond with meaningful feedback based on the drawings. On the analysis side, BeSocratic contains sophisticated clustering techniques which group students based on the similarly of their submissions. This allows teachers to only look at a small subset of student submissions and quickly get an overview of an entire class's understanding level."

A CI designed specifically for Introductory Biology courses through the Bioliteracy Project. This CI was built with a "focus on conceptual misconceptions, preconceived notions, and vernacular misconceptions."

"Designed to complement the First Year Undergraduate Experimental Design Inventory, this inventory was developed because there is a great need for students to be able to critically analyze data accurately in order to make informed decisions and come to reliable conclusions. Again, this skill transfers beyond Biology, and Science, because the ability to assess the validity of any research-based claim will provide the opportunity to make better life choices."

"Concept Inventories that are being developed by various members of the Q4B Team... Included is information regarding the rationale behind development, how many questions have been - or will be - developed, the anticipated development timeframe until the inventory is ready for use, and any other inventory-specific information such as important teaching notes/guides."

This is the data management site for the HvZ game.  This is where you register games, players can sign up for your game, chat with each other, report tags, etc.

This is the main website that talks about the game generally and has a HvZ store.