Resources for Teaching and Assessing the Vision and Change Biology Core Concepts.

The Vision and Change report called for the biology community to mobilize around teaching the core concepts of biology. This essay describes a collection of resources developed by several different groups that can be used to respond to the report's call to transform undergraduate education at both the individual course and departmental levels. First, we present two frameworks that help articulate the Vision and Change core concepts, the BioCore Guide and the Conceptual Elements (CE) Framework, which can be used in mapping the core concepts onto existing curricula and designing new curricula that teach the biology core concepts. Second, we describe how the BioCore Guide and the CE Framework can be used alongside the Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education curricular rubric as a way for departments to self-assess their teaching of the core concepts. Finally, we highlight three sets of instruments that can be used to directly assess student learning of the core concepts: the Biology Card Sorting Task, the Biology Core Concept Instruments, and the Biology-Measuring Achievement and Progression in Science instruments. Approaches to using these resources independently and synergistically are discussed.

Using the Biology Card Sorting Task to Measure Changes in Conceptual Expertise during Postsecondary Biology Education.

While there have been concerted efforts to reform undergraduate biology toward teaching students to organize their conceptual knowledge like experts, there are few tools that attempt to measure this. We previously developed the Biology Card Sorting Task (BCST), designed to probe how individuals organize their conceptual biological knowledge. Previous results showed the BCST could differentiate between different populations, namely non-biology majors (NBM) and biology faculty (BF). In this study, we administered the BCST to three additional populations, using a cross-sectional design: entering biology majors (EBM), advanced biology majors (ABM), and biology graduate students (BGS). Intriguingly, ABM did not initially sort like experts any more frequently than EBM. However, once the deep-feature framework was revealed, ABM were able to sort like experts more readily than did EBM. These results are consistent with the conclusion that biology education enables advanced biology students to use an expert-like conceptual framework. However, these results are also consistent with a process of "selection," wherein students who persist in the major may have already had an expert-like conceptual framework to begin with. These results demonstrate the utility of the BCST in measuring differences between groups of students over the course of their undergraduate education.

Development of the biology card sorting task to measure conceptual expertise in biology.

There are widespread aspirations to focus undergraduate biology education on teaching students to think conceptually like biologists; however, there is a dearth of assessment tools designed to measure progress from novice to expert biological conceptual thinking. We present the development of a novel assessment tool, the Biology Card Sorting Task, designed to probe how individuals organize their conceptual knowledge of biology. While modeled on tasks from cognitive psychology, this task is unique in its design to test two hypothesized conceptual frameworks for the organization of biological knowledge: 1) a surface feature organization focused on organism type and 2) a deep feature organization focused on fundamental biological concepts. In this initial investigation of the Biology Card Sorting Task, each of six analytical measures showed statistically significant differences when used to compare the card sorting results of putative biological experts (biology faculty) and novices (non-biology major undergraduates). Consistently, biology faculty appeared to sort based on hypothesized deep features, while non-biology majors appeared to sort based on either surface features or nonhypothesized organizational frameworks. Results suggest that this novel task is robust in distinguishing populations of biology experts and biology novices and may be an adaptable tool for tracking emerging biology conceptual expertise.

Patterns of plasma corticotropin-releasing hormone, progesterone, estradiol, and estriol change and the onset of human labor.

CONTEXT: Clinical prediction of preterm delivery is largely ineffective, and the mechanism mediating progesterone (P) withdrawal and estrogen activation at the onset of human labor is unclear. OBJECTIVES: Our objectives were to determine associations of rates of change of circulating maternal CRH in midpregnancy with preterm delivery, CRH with estriol (E3) concentrations in late pregnancy, and predelivery changes in the ratios of E3, estradiol (E2), and P. DESIGN AND SETTING: A cohort of 500 pregnant women was followed from first antenatal visits to delivery during the period 2000-2004 at John Hunter Hospital, New South Wales, Australia, a tertiary care obstetric hospital. PATIENTS: Unselected subjects were recruited (including women with multiple gestations) and serial blood samples obtained. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: CRH daily percentage change in term and preterm singletons at 26 wk, ratios E3/E2, P/E3, and P/E2 and the association between E3 and CRH concentrations in the last month of pregnancy (with spontaneous labor onset) were assessed. RESULTS: CRH percentage daily change was significantly higher in preterm than term singletons at 26 wk (medians 3.09 and 2.73; P = 0.003). In late pregnancy, CRH and E3 concentrations were significantly positively associated (P = 0.003). E3/E2 increased, P/E3 decreased, and P/E2 was unchanged in the month before delivery (medians: E3/E2, 7.04 and 10.59, P < 0.001; P/E3, 1.55 and 0.98, P < 0.001; P/E2, 11.78 and 10.79, P = 0.07). CONCLUSIONS: The very rapid rise of CRH in late pregnancy is associated with an E3 surge and critically altered P/E3 and E3/E2 ratios that create an estrogenic environment at the onset of labor. Our evidence provides a rationale for the use of CRH in predicting preterm birth and informs approaches to delaying labor using P supplementation.