Catalyzed by the writing of Chemistry, Life, the Universe & Everything (CLUE), the rewriting of Biofundamentals, and a collaboration on a better approach to teaching thermodynamics, it has become apparent that course content is as important as pedagogical strategies in terms of effective education. Taken a step further, the set of courses required of a student to attain a degree needs to be carefully considered in terms of facts, concepts, and skills presented and there relevance to the discipline. That this is currently not the case is illustrated by situations in which biology students are required to take physics courses that fail to address the physical concepts relevant to biology, calculus courses in majors that never have cause to use calculus, and organic chemistry courses focused on reactions that are incompatible with life. Such distracting courses can divert and discourage students from pursuing their true interests. We propose that departments develop and adhere to coherent curricula, which means that what students are expected to learn from each and every required course is explicitly articulated. In addition to driving departments to seriously consider the relevance of particular courses, as well as key topics that may be missing from their current curriculum, this process reasserts departments' responsibility for their overall curriculum and students' learning outcomes. It also provides a benchmark for evaluating a curriculum's efficacy. A number of approaches to gathering these data will be presented, including the use of the beSocratic system. Such data-driven audits would reveal where departmental expectations are overly optimistic or where curricular commitments are inadequate, data that would hopefully drive course and curricular improvements. I acknowledge the transformative effects on my thinking due directly to my collaborations with Melanie Cooper and the support of the NSF for many of the projects mentioned.

Coherent curriculum and meaningful assessment

247th National Meeting (2014)

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