Student Outcomes

Program Description of the Biology BS

The Biology Department at Western Washington University serves approximately 400 majors. At the beginning of their degree (Phase I), all students take a core set of 200-level Biology courses designed to introduce them to the breadth of biological subdisciplines. The three courses that make up these basic requirements are: Biol 204 – Introduction to Evolution, Ecology, and Biodiversity; Biol 205 – Introduction to Cellular and Molecular Biology; Biol 206 – Introduction to Organismal Biology. Each course has an associated lab which emphasizes content and laboratory techniques important to the discipline. Concurrent with these Biology courses, students also take a General Chemistry series. To advance as a Phase II Biology major, students must perform well in these core Biology and Chemistry courses.

After completion of the 200-level core courses, Phase II Biology majors continue with a set of 300-level core courses, and one 400-level course, designed to cover major biological subdisciplines in greater depth. These courses are: Biol 321 – Genetics; Biol 323 – Cell and Molecular Biology; Bio 325 – Ecology; and Biol 432 – Organic Evolution. Most of our majors also take Biol 340 – Biometrics, although some take a statistics course offered by the Mathematics Department. There are 300-level laboratory courses associated with these courses that many of our students take depending on their area of emphasis (see below). Thus, these breadth requirements build on the framework established in the 200-level courses with an increasing emphasis on science process skills, critical thinking, and analysis of the primary literature.

When students declare Biology as their major, they choose an area of emphasis which leads to depth requirements. These 300-level and 400-level courses are structured to cover specific biological topics in great detail. These courses place emphasis on deep content knowledge, the ability to think and act like a scientist, including designing and executing experiments, and written and oral communication.

Thus, an important aspect of the curriculum in the Biology Department is for the students to develop their cognitive abilities from knowledge acquisition and application to knowledge analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. It is expected that students can achieve the desired intellectual progress by learning more deeply about topics as they recursively return to and focus on topics through the curriculum. They further increase their analytical and evaluative skills by performing ever-more advanced scientific research as they progress from freshman through senior levels. They are also able to communicate scientific principles and conduct research in increasingly sophisticated ways, from simple lab papers to research papers, oral presentations, and scientific posters on independent research.

Learning Goals and Learning Objectives

We have identified the following learning goals for our students:

Content Goals:

1. Our students will understand and apply fundamental biological principles from the major areas of biology (ecology, genetics, evolution, cell and molecular biology, and organismal biology).
2. Our students will acquire in-depth knowledge from the major areas of biology and be able to integrate principles from these areas.
3. Our students will acquire laboratory and field skills necessary to answer biological questions.

Process Goals:

1. Our students will develop enhanced critical thinking skills.
2. Our students will develop effective quantitative reasoning skills.
3. Our students will communicate precisely and analytically in written and oral forms.
4. Our students will engage independently and collaboratively in the scientific process.

Mission statement (from Department Strategic Plan)

Our mission is to provide an outstanding learning environment that integrates education, scholarship, and service to actively engage students in the biological sciences and to foster their development as lifelong learners.

To view our grid of student outcomes, content goals, and learning objectives for our core courses...

• View the grid in a new page.
• Or view the printable PDF.

Biology Program Assessment

How do we know that all of our learning objectives have been met when students leave our program?

We plan to assess student performance in a few key senior-level courses in a standardized way. These will be small courses that require students to think critically about topics that are integrative amongst biology subdisciplines (e.g., Evolutionary Biology, Symbiosis, Physiological Ecology, Developmental Biology of Animals). Process skills will be evaluated as each course will require students to perform all or most of our identified process learning goals (e.g. write review papers, develop research projects, write research papers, and present their work orally or visually to their peers). This can be accomplished by:

1. Identifying the key courses. They must encompass the range of emphases such that each Biology major will take at least one of these courses before graduation.
2. Using common rubrics/templates for assessment. These need to be developed, although several faculty members already use innovative assessment methods which can be modified for this purpose.
3. Developing a common method of self-assessment for students as they finish the course or graduate.

Biology faculty mentor students in research activities and many undergraduate students present their research at science meetings or are included as coauthors on published manuscripts. We currently keep track of faculty publications and presentations on a quarterly basis. This can easily be extended to record student publications and presentations (Appendix IV).

How will we facilitate a standardized assessment of these key courses?

All Biology faculty members must have a common understanding of the learning goals and objectives, and communicate them in a standardized way to our students. This can be accomplished by:

1. Developing a program matrix which lists all offered courses and identifies the learning objectives addressed in each. This will give faculty members a broader perspective on the Biology program as a whole and allow us to assess how well our objectives are being met.
2. Standardizing syllabi to communicate which learning objectives are addressed in the course.
3. Publishing learning goals and learning objectives on the Biology website.

Biology faculty, especially those teaching the key courses, must work together to develop common assessment tools. This can be accomplished by:

1. Devoting a departmental retreat to this issue.
2. Developing a database of all courses and the assessments used in them. This will allow us to standardize core classes and share ideas with other faculty.
3. Collecting rubrics/descriptions of different types of assessments used in various courses. This will allow us to standardize core classes and share ideas with other faculty.

How will we assess the perceptions of graduating majors and alumni about the quality of their Biology education?

The Biology Department must assess whether graduates of the department have the requisite skills and content knowledge to be successful in Biology. This can be accomplished by:

1. Developing a common method of self-assessment for students as they finish a key course or they graduate (a questionnaire for graduating seniors has already been developed and is currently given to students; Appendix V).
2. Administering an alumni survey. This has been started via the Alumni Office and the results of the survey of the 2004-2005 graduates can be found in Appendix VI.

How will we use the information gained from our program assessment to change our curriculum as necessary?

Biology faculty must have time to critically analyze assessment data from the key courses. This can be accomplished by:

1. Instituting an Assessment committee that can report to the rest of the faculty. This committee will work closely with the Curriculum committee to implement curricular changes as necessary.
2. Scheduling regular departmental retreats (bi-yearly) to involve all faculty members directly.

Classroom Assessment

With the adoption of a new strategic plan in Spring 2006, and with the current Outcomes Assessment Plan, the Biology department will be better prepared to more effectively assess student learning outcomes in our major programs. A variety of classroom assessment techniques are currently utilized to complement a highly integrative major’s curriculum (Table 1), and they are aligned with institutional teaching and learning goals (Table 2). Instructors will be able to apply these assessment techniques strategically within courses and across sequences, recognizing that student skill development requires focus and repeated attention (i.e., practice), and that assessment must be aligned with the most important themes of the course.

Therefore, increasing emphasis will be placed on the ability of students to think analytically, to understand and communicate biological principles at both detailed and "big picture" levels, and to acquire life-long skills that permit continuous adaptation in biology-related fields that are in constant flux. Furthermore, the timely application of specific types of assessment will be utilized not only to provide feedback for students about their learning in a course, but also to drive student learning in a variety of settings (e.g., reflective journals, poster presentations, peer review, etc.).

The combined effect of informative syllabi that include teaching goals and clear expectations for student learning, a logical progression of learning experiences in our course offerings, and meaningful classroom assessment techniques will allow our department to create and maintain a mechanism by which to monitor students’ developing skills and support ongoing curriculum development to improve student learning.

Classroom assessment techniques currently used in the Biology department:

• Exams – factual recall, data analysis and interpretation, short answer and essay
• Quizzes – factual recall, data analysis and interpretation, short answer
• Lab practicals
• Research proposals
• Research papers from class lab experiments
• Research papers from independent (group) lab experiments
• Literature review papers
• Oral presentations from independent lab experiments
• Poster presentations from independent lab experiments
• Oral presentation of literature
• Discussion participation
• Lab notebooks
• Reflective journals
• Worksheets
• Problem sets
• Lab exercises
• Peer review of student work
• Data analysis
• Biological collections
• Critical analysis of primary literature
• Feedback from external supervisors
• Undergraduate teaching evaluations

A comparison of institutional and departmental teaching and learning goals:

Institutional Goals

• Written and oral communication
• Quantitative and symbolic reasoning
• Critical analysis and logical thinking
• Literacy in the discourse of the program of study

Content Goals

• Understand and apply biological principles
• In-depth knowledge and integrate principles
• Laboratory and field skills necessary to answer questions

Process Goals

• Critical thinking
• QSR
• Engage independently and collaboratively