Students who are directly involved in scientific activities develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of both scientific knowledge and the scientific process. This understanding is critically important in scientific areas like climate change that are the focus of global public and political debate. Toward this end, we used a publicly available atmospheric carbon dioxide modeling activity in a non-major biology course to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of climate change science. This activity steps students through the development of a basic model of carbon flow between the land, the atmosphere, and the ocean. Students manipulate components of the model to optimize the model based on known data. The model is then used to make predictions for future atmospheric carbon dioxide under scenarios that the students generate and test. For the initial implementation of this lab, pre/post assessment questions evaluated the student's confidence in science and general science knowledge, as well as gauged the usefulness of this class activity. Assessment data and student feedback indicated that the students enjoyed this activity and learned about climate change dynamics and also about the climate change modeling process.

Reviewing and integrating key concepts and learning goals at the end of a biology course can be overwhelming to students and instructors alike. Often end-of-term review sessions in preparation for final exams are heavily based on memorization, and content coverage may be favored over students’ deeper understanding of fewer key ideas. We developed a final exam review for a virtual introductory evolution course using an “escape room” format, which consisted of unique activities—including puzzles, role-playing, and literature searches—aligned with course learning goals. Similar to a traditional escape room, students needed to collaboratively solve or complete each activity before moving on to the subsequent task. Our escape room activity was conducted virtually via Zoom and included both whole-class and smaller breakout room interactions. We recommend instructors utilize escape rooms as an engaging and effective way to review key concepts in their courses.

Primary image: Virtual Escape Room. In our activity, students virtually engage in activities related to evolutionary topics such as cichlid speciation, mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, and extinction, among others. All images used in this image are open source, and associated links for all images are listed here: https://unsplash.com/photos/smgTvepind4, https://unsplash.com/photos/4_hFxTsmaO4, https://unsplash.com/photos/_BJVJ4WcV1M, https://unsplash.com/photos/k0KRNtqcjfw, https://unsplash.com/photos/Pitb97HIn6Y