Grab a cup of coffee and join us for a Codon Coffee Convo with Scott Freeman! Scott is a co-PI on an NSF-sponsored project to develop lesson-level learning objectives for majors and nonmajors introductory biology. Nearly 800 instructors contributed draft learning objectives, suggested revisions, and voted to identify those that are essential for biology students to know and be able to do. Scott will discuss how this project may impact the way we think about course design.

Together with the Codon Learning team, Scott will present Introducing Life Sciences, a new course for Biology majors. We’ll demonstrate how this courseware operationalizes the learning objectives by 1) making it easy for instructors to align all course materials to the learning objectives and 2) helping students identify what they know and do not yet know, study using self-testing rather than trying to memorize a textbook, and monitor their progress at the learning objective level.

Scott Freeman is Lecturer Emeritus at the University of Washington. The recipient of a UW Distinguished Teaching Award, he has published research on how innovative approaches to teaching science benefit all students, but particularly students from disadvantaged backgrounds. He is the author of the textbooks Biological Science and Evolutionary Analysis, which have sold over 500,000 copies and been translated into multiple languages, and the popular book Saving Tarboo Creek, which is for general audiences.