Increasing Student Success in Organismal Biology 

This course is one of four required lower-division biology courses for all of our biology and biotechnology majors, and the second in a two-semester sequence that covers core biological concepts (Biology 210 and 211). Biology 211 is also taken by many other science majors including biochemistry and chemistry. This course, along with Biology 210, is a severe bottleneck because of an exponential growth of majors with limited facilities for lab courses, and conceptual roadblocks leading to high repeatable grades. We would like to use this redesign opportunity to introduce more interactive lecture lessons and draw upon the vast number of newer techniques now available to increase student engagement and reduce the DFW rate. In addition, sections of this course are also being taught by an increasing number of lecturer faculty so another goal will be to create a formal Course Guide for lecturers, accompanied by a library of teaching modules (i.e., videos, interactive activities, quizzes, etc.).