Introductory Biology—without the massive textbook

It's quiz time, as it is at the beginning of every session of Biology 163. The second-floor classroom in Kraus Natural Science is quiet except for some sniffles and an occasional exasperated sigh.

Professor Dan Klionsky uses innovative teaching methods in his biology courses. (Photo by Martin Vloet, U-M Photo Services)

But the instant the quizzes are finished and passed to the front of the room, animated discussion breaks out everywhere. The 35 students turn to each other intently in clusters of three and four and begin dissecting questions, flipping through their ring binders to find the answers that felt wobbly.

"There's a new Shine-Dalgarno for every gene," sophomore Denzel Davis explains to his neighbor, talking with his hands. "If you have, like, an operon ... "

It's obvious, eavesdropping on the groups and the vocabulary they are using, that the students are actively thinking about the material, not just letting it wash over them.

Dan Klionsky, professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, is an outspoken critic of the way science courses such as introductory biology are taught, and he is doing something about it. Honors Biology 163 is a new way of teaching and learning biology at Michigan.

"You can't just transfer knowledge from one person to another," Klionsky says. "Knowledge is constructed, and learned, by each individual in their own way."

The approach used in Bio 163 is called active learning. It abandons the traditional pedagogy of the heavy textbook and the heavier lectures, replacing them instead with terse lecture notes, daily quizzes, and a lot of group discussion and interaction with the professor.

Klionsky didn't invent active learning, but, he says, "I invented more of it than I had to because I wasn't aware of the learning literature."

His teaching, and his writings about it, recently attracted the attention of other science educators and won a prestigious 2003 National Science Foundation (NSF) Director's Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars. The NSF award includes a four-year grant of $305,000 to figure out if the approach can be applied to larger classes and spread to other areas of U-M's biology curriculum, and to measure its outcomes.

Klionsky, a cell biologist who also is a research professor in the new Life Sciences Institute, considers the $125 textbook used in the traditional biology course optional at best. "I've opened the book once," says Marc Kaplan, a junior from Grosse Pointe. Instead, Klionsky provides students with his lecture notes, which fit into an inch-and-a-half ring binder.

The students teach themselves and each other. "We sort of feed off each other," says Davis, an engineering major from Cincinnati who had a perfect 10 on the previous quiz. In addition to their work in small groups during the class, they meet as informal study groups to puzzle through the readings, and to try sample problems Klionsky has on his Web site.

"We've learned a lot without really realizing it," says Abbey Martin, a sophomore from Fenton. "I went to this chemical engineering thing last week, and I actually understood everything they were saying."

The quiz at the beginning of each class is based on what is going to happen that day, rather than material from a previous class. That is, the students are expected to understand the ideas somewhat, even before Klionsky has taught them.

"I showed the syllabus to my friends in 162 [the traditional introductory biology course, with 570 students] and they kind of laughed," says Joshua Jones, a sophomore from Grand Rapids. "We have to actually, like, keep up on the reading instead of just jamming it all in before the final."

"But I bet we know it much better than they do," Jones quickly adds. "That's the trade-off of doing more work."

—Story courtesy LSA Magazine