title: 1, 2, 3, 4: infusing quantitative literacy into introductory biology.
abstract: Biology of the twenty-first century is an increasingly quantitative science. Undergraduate biology education therefore needs to provide opportunities for students to develop fluency in the tools and language of quantitative disciplines. Quantitative literacy (QL) is important for future scientists as well as for citizens, who need to interpret numeric information and data-based claims regarding nearly every aspect of daily life. To address the need for QL in biology education, we incorporated quantitative concepts throughout a semester-long introductory biology course at a large research university. Early in the course, we assessed the quantitative skills that students bring to the introductory biology classroom and found that students had difficulties in performing simple calculations, representing data graphically, and articulating data-driven arguments. In response to students' learning needs, we infused the course with quantitative concepts aligned with the existing course content and learning objectives. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated by significant improvement in the quality of students' graphical representations of biological data. Infusing QL in introductory biology presents challenges. Our study, however, supports the conclusion that it is feasible in the context of an existing course, consistent with the goals of college biology education, and promotes students' development of important quantitative skills.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO 63103, USA. espeth@slu.edu
authors.forename: Elena Bray
authors.initials: EB
authors.lastname: Speth
authors.forename: Jennifer L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Momsen
authors.forename: Gregory A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Moyerbrailean
authors.forename: Diane
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ebert-May
authors.forename: Tammy M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Long
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wyse
authors.forename: Debra
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Linton
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001001:Anura; D001695:Biology / Q000193:education*; D003479:Curriculum / Q000639:trends*; D004521:Educational Measurement; D008433:Mathematics / Q000193:education*; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013334:Students; D019596:Wolves
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