Integrating Concepts in Biology: A Model for More Effective Ways to Introduce Students to Biology

This is a review of Integrating Concepts in Biology, an innovative electronic textbook intended for either or both semesters of a typical introductory biology sequence. The e-book is an excellent example of effective pedagogy informed by recent educational scholarship.Integrating Concepts in Biology (ICB) is the apt title of this groundbreaking electronic textbook (see Supplemental Material). The target audience is students seeking an introduction to biology. It is structured to focus student attention on key concepts underlying biology at all levels of organization. In contrast to the current encyclopedic model of an introductory textbook, this e-book makes effective use of electronically linked text and online resources, selects examples to explore in depth, and offers students means to deepen their understanding. It explicitly uses current ideas about student learning, supported by evidence of best practices, to help students develop as biologically literate thinkers. The authors are colleagues at Davidson College: biologists A. Malcolm Campbell (cellular and molecular biology) and Christopher J. Paradise (ecology) and mathematician/computer scientist/bioinformaticist Laurie J. Heyer. They share a common passion for innovative pedagogy and multidisciplinarity, and ICB is their laudable effort to address many of the widely recognized problems evident in introductory biology texts and introductory courses and explored in recent reports such as BIO2010 (National Research Council NRC], 2003 ) and Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2011 ).