Evolutionary trees communicate both the diversity and unity of life, a central and important scientific concept, as highlighted by the Vision and Change undergraduate biology education movement. Evolutionary trees and cladograms are diagrams viewed by biologists as Rosetta Stone-like in how well they convey an enormous amount of information with clarity and precision. However, the majority of undergraduates in introductory biology courses find the non-linear diagram confusing and do not immediately understand the tree-thinking central to interpreting the evolutionary tree’s branching structure. Go Extinct! is an original board game featuring land vertebrates (i.e., amphibians, mammals, birds and reptiles) and it is designed to engage students in reading this evolutionary tree. Go Extinct! won the Society for the Study of Evolution’s Huxley Award for outstanding outreach achievements in recognition for how the gameplay itself incentivizes students to identify clades and common ancestors on a stylized tree. The game can be completed in about 30 minutes, which allows instructors time to give follow-up activity sheets that help students transfer their new ability to read a stylized tree into the ability to read more traditional-looking trees found in textbooks and the literature. Overall, teaching the game, playing the game, and completing the follow-up transfer activity can be completed in a 50-minute section. Each game can serve up to 6 students, which means 3 games can cover a section of 18 students. Go Extinct! provides a fun and effective learning experience that students will remember and may even request to play again.

Primary Image: Biologists play Go Extinct! Students who play Go Extinct! gain a mastery of reading an evolutionary tree or cladogram. The winning strategy depends on identifying common ancestors of animal cards in your hand. Photo taken by the author.

As biology becomes more data driven, teaching students data literacy skills has become central to biology curriculum. Despite a wealth of online resources that teach researchers how to use R, there are few that offer practical laboratory-based exercises, with teaching resources such as keys, learning objectives, and assessment materials. Here, we present a modular set of lessons and lab activities to help teach R through the platform of RStudio. Both software applications are free and open source making this curriculum highly accessible across various institutions. This curriculum was developed over several years of teaching a graduate level computational biology course. In response to the pandemic, the class was shifted to be completely online. These resources were then migrated to GitHub to make them broadly accessible to anyone wanting to learn R for the analysis of biological datasets. In the following year, these resources were used to teach the course in a flipped format, which is the lesson plan presented here. In general, students responded well to the flipped format, which used class time to conduct live coding demos and work through challenges with the instructor and teaching assistant. Overall, students were able to use these skills to practice analyzing and interpreting data, as well as producing publication quality graphics. While the modules presented range from very basic, doing simple summary statistics and plotting, to quite advanced, where R is integrated onto the command line, teachers should feel free to pick and choose which elements to incorporate into their own curriculum.

Primary Image: R‐Mini‐Course: An Introduction to R. The primary image was generated with BioRender to be a small representation of the applicability of R that we cover in our course.

Write-to-learn (WTL) assignments have been used in a variety of disciplines to encourage conceptual learning and critical thinking in undergraduate education. These assignments focus on facilitating rather than assessing learning. Conversely, write-to-communicate (WTC) assignments (e.g., lab reports and exams), often with the goal of assessing learning, are more commonly employed in foundation STEM courses. We developed a WTL assignment that focuses on promoting curiosity driven learning, critical thinking, and metacognition; skills that promote students’ scientific literacy through writing. We integrated theoretical frameworks for scientific literacy, that include the sub-constructs of third space, authenticity, and multiple discourse as well as science as a human endeavour, and metacognition and self-direction (1, 2) to develop this 3-part WTL assignment. In this assignment, students first select a topic of interest and write freely on their current understanding of the topic (Part 1). They then develop a research question based on their writing and seek answers to their question from published literature (Part 2). Finally, they reflect on their overall experience with the WTL process and propose further avenues of investigation for their research topic (Part 3). Student feedback suggests that they enjoyed the WTL process and their overall satisfaction with the structure of the assignment was high. As we continue to evolve the assignment based on student feedback, we are gratified that students reported high self-efficacy with regard to future writing as a result of participating in this assignment. We recommend use of this type of WTL assignment in large, introductory STEM courses, so as to facilitate rather than simply assess students’ learning.

Primary Image: Scientific literacy through writing. Schematic depicting a write-to-learn assignment format implemented in an introductory undergraduate biology course, along with corresponding science literacy constructs.

Write-to-learn (WTL) assignments have been used in a variety of disciplines to encourage conceptual learning and critical thinking in undergraduate education. These assignments focus on facilitating rather than assessing learning. Conversely, write-to-communicate (WTC) assignments (e.g., lab reports and exams), often with the goal of assessing learning, are more commonly employed in foundation STEM courses. We developed a WTL assignment that focuses on promoting curiosity driven learning, critical thinking, and metacognition; skills that promote students’ scientific literacy through writing. We integrated theoretical frameworks for scientific literacy, that include the sub-constructs of third space, authenticity, and multiple discourse as well as science as a human endeavour, and metacognition and self-direction (1, 2) to develop this 3-part WTL assignment. In this assignment, students first select a topic of interest and write freely on their current understanding of the topic (Part 1). They then develop a research question based on their writing and seek answers to their question from published literature (Part 2). Finally, they reflect on their overall experience with the WTL process and propose further avenues of investigation for their research topic (Part 3). Student feedback suggests that they enjoyed the WTL process and their overall satisfaction with the structure of the assignment was high. As we continue to evolve the assignment based on student feedback, we are gratified that students reported high self-efficacy with regard to future writing as a result of participating in this assignment. We recommend use of this type of WTL assignment in large, introductory STEM courses, so as to facilitate rather than simply assess students’ learning.

Primary Image: Scientific literacy through writing. Schematic depicting a write-to-learn assignment format implemented in an introductory undergraduate biology course, along with corresponding science literacy constructs.

Students can have difficulty recognizing examples of course concepts in the real-world. They particularly struggle with phenomena that are ambiguously defined, have mimics, or are hard to distinguish from other phenomena. Students can better explore and understand these phenomena in situ. Unfortunately, short class periods, students’ full schedules, and limited resources hinder classic fieldtrips. So, I created Walkabout, which gives students experiences observing and analyzing in situ phenomenon in the surrounding environment during class periods. Walkabout aligns with elements of active learning, experiential learning, and adventure education. In Walkabout, students learn about and discuss the key characteristics of a concept or phenomenon using pre-class readings, reading responses, and class discussion of classic examples. Then, students leave the learning space to walk outside, identify, and photograph examples of the phenomenon. They return to the classroom or online learning space having selected their best example, which they present to the class and engage in a discussion of how well it represents the phenomenon. This activity can be applied to any course topic that discusses real-world phenomena that are easily observable in the environment surrounding the learners but are difficult to identify or define. Instructors can use it with in-person or online classes, synchronously or asynchronously, and in high-tech, low-tech, and no-tech learning environments. Walkabout helps to scaffold student learning, allows students to practice applying difficult concepts, and creates a more inclusive learning environment. It energizes students, helps them learn from each other, and keeps them engaged and focused in a way they enjoy.

Primary Image: A picture of a student using a smartphone to take a photograph of nature.

The module was used in lab following lecture material on pairwise interactions in ecology (emphasizing consumption, competition, mutualism), and parallel to community ecology (emphasizing food web structure, succession, resistance and resilience).

Students learn about stream ecology on the island of Hawaii using data available through USGS and University of Hawaii websites and develop an understanding for potential stream changes due to predicted climate change.

Eben N. Broadbent, PhD, is an assistant professor of forest ecology & geomatics in the School of Forest Resources and Conservation at the University of Florida, with a PhD in Biology (Ecology & Evolution) from Stanford University. He talks to us about the challenges and opportunities for ecological mapping using drones, including how planet microsatellites are imaging the planet daily.

Students often enter introductory biology courses with misconceptions about evolution. For example, many students believe that traits arise when a species needs them or that evolutionary processes are goal-oriented. To address these and other misconceptions, we have developed an activity called "Boost Your Evolution IQ." Student groups compete against one another in a fast-paced, challenging quiz that is presented using PowerPoint. Questions get harder from beginning to end, and the stakes get higher: Each correct answer earns double points in round 2 and then triple points in round 3. Student collaboration throughout the activity helps reinforce the concepts in advanced students and allows struggling students to hear evolution explained in various ways. Further, the same misconception is often tested multiple times, allowing students to learn from their mistakes. This activity is useful as a review before an evolution exam or as a pre- and post-test. It may also be adapted for large classes using clicker technology. We provide a detailed explanation of the approach in the attached video (Supporting File S1).

This module contains information for a three part series introducing the venom system in reptiles and discussing it in an evolutionary context. In the first part venom and its ecological roles are defined with a discussion of the diversity of venom structures and venomous lineages, primarily in squamates. Examples are provided of the various ways that venoms may vary among biological scales. In parts 2 and 3, the evolution of venom is discussed. Part 2 focuses on a description of how the venom system arose in squamates and a discussion of the challenges associated with defining "venomousness". Part 3 examines the various genetic mechanisms that produce venom variation using examples from primarily literature that are presented in Part 1. In addition to lecture materials, we include a primary literature based activity and a group activity designed to encourage students to explore the diversity of venomous taxa in reptiles and amphibians.

Genetic drift is an important mechanism of evolution, yet undergraduates often fail to understand how it leads to evolutionary change due in part to its random nature. This lesson plan describes a simulation-based activity that allows students to demonstrate the process of genetic drift across generations. Using a simulated population of tuco-tucos - a small rodent native to South America - students can explore how allele frequencies can change over time due to chance. Students will also demonstrate random changes in allele frequency (genetic drift) using two different population sizes (with an extended option for a third population size) so they may better conceptualize the impact of population size on genetic drift as an evolutionary force. Using inexpensive materials (beans and paper cups), instructors can actively engage students in the process of evolution. The simulations are followed by a brief discussion of two real-world examples of bottleneck and founder effects, two events when the impact of genetic drift can become more pronounced. The lesson then ends with a series of thought questions to reinforce student understanding of how genetic drift leads to evolution. This activity is appropriate for small or large class sizes and advanced high school and college biology courses. It can also be adapted for non-major college biology courses.

In this lesson, students discuss anti-predator defense mechanisms and the types of cues defenses provide to predators. Students then interpret graphs of behavior of arthropod predators when presented with different phenotypes of color polymorphic tortoise beetles. Finally, students view and reflect on an interview with Dr. Lynette Strickland, the biologist who collected the data that they interpreted.