This is a plan to improve and modernize the delivery and content of a large-enrollment introductory level biology course. We plan to adopt a studio approach to delivery of this course: sections of eighty students will work in teams of two or four with faculty and graduate students guiding the learning process. In place of the traditional formal lecture/laboratory model, the students will receive information from computer text, demonstrations, simulations, and hands-on experimentation. The studio stresses group work and student-driven learning. To make the general course more relevant to students, we plan to group them into studio sections by major and/or common interests. It is our hypothesis that the combination of interaction between students with similar goals and focus on relevant examples will improve learning and retention in our course. This may be particularly true for women, non-traditional students, and minorities. At other institutions where studio formats have been introduced into basic science courses, preliminary studies indicate improved performance in later, more advanced courses among those students who have taken the first course in studio form. We will disseminate the results of our project in several ways: 1 ) because course material will be placed on the World-Wide Web, it will be accessible at many locations. 2) We will prepare a manuscript for submission to educational journals describing our results. 3) We will attend regional and national educational meetings and present our model and report our findings.
