2 Redesigning a General Biology Course: Increasing an Emphasis on Sustainability and Social/Environmental Justice

Background

General Biology II at the University of Minnesota-Duluth is a large-enrollment course, serving ~400 undergraduate students (primarily freshmen and sophomores) per year. It is required for all Biology, Biochemistry, and Environmental Science majors and minors. Additionally, it fulfills the Sustainability requirement in UMD’s Liberal Education Program. Course content focuses on a wide range of “bigger than a cell” topics in biology, including: phylogeny, animal, plant, fungal and microbial diversity, animal and plant physiology, and ecology.

What was the project?

Integrating sustainability topics into the ~ two-week ecology unit of the course has been relatively straightforward. However, that unit only comprises ~20% of course content. Incorporating sustainability into other aspects of the course has been more challenging, especially for the units focused on animal and plant physiology which comprise ~40% of the course. My desire was to better integrate sustainability throughout the course and enhance topics bringing awareness to issues of social and environmental justice related to biology, health, and scientific research. By making these topics more central to the course I hoped to increase students’ awareness understanding and of the social pillar of sustainability.

What did I do/plan to do?

I set out to use the principles of Backward Course Design (Wiggins and McTighe, 1998) as I modified my course to have a greater emphasis on sustainability topics. In this approach, step 1 is to identify the desired results. To that end, I met with Ilene Alexander of UMN’s Center for Educational Innovation (CEI) who coached me on developing course goals and unit learning objectives. As a result of this consultation and a lengthy reflection of where the course should be focused, I examined and modified my course goals, adding four new ones (2, 3, 4, and 8 below).

At the end of this course, students should:

1. 1. Know the basic principles of the origin of life and how evolution by natural selection has shaped the phylogenetic tree of life.
   2. Understand how organisms, species, and ecosystems maintain homeostasis.
   3. Holistically interconnect physiological and ecological systems and understand why this interconnectedness is central to sustainability for both organisms and ecosystems.
   4. Predict the effects of natural and anthropogenic disturbances on the homeostasis and sustainability of organisms and ecosystems.
   5. Demonstrate analysis of quantitative and qualitative data including entry and organization of data with spreadsheets and their analysis and presentation in graphs, tables, and figures.
   6. Demonstrate communication of the results of scientific knowledge to students and instructors in both written and oral forms.
   7. Demonstrate proficiency with instruments commonly used in biological research (microscopes, etc.).
   8. Understand key ethical and cultural considerations associated with scientific inquiry.

In strict Backward Course Design the next step would be to determine acceptable evidence that these results have been achieved (assessment). However, I wanted to identify specific topics that were available for integration rather than starting from scratch. Consequently, I initially selected literature that illustrated cases of race-based medicine that could provide a social-economic component relevant to my current course topics (Cerdeña et al. 2020; Vyas et al. 2020). I then mapped these topics to relevant course material, and then looked for sustainability topics relevant to other aspects of the course.

Table 1. Examples of sustainability connections for selected course topics in General Biology II.

A specific example of how eGFR is integrated.

One specific example of a sustainability topic I have integrated into the animal/human physiology section of the course is a connection to how race can affect the evaluation of a patient’s kidney function during our discussion of electrolyte and water balance. A commonly used metric for assessing human kidney function is via the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), a proxy for how well the kidneys are filtering blood. The primary determinant of eGFR is the level of blood creatinine- a muscle waste product. The creatinine levels are entered into an equation and the resulting eGFR is used to help determine when patients need to go on dialysis, their rank on kidney transplant lists, etc. The equation used is different for white vs. African American patients. This difference is ascribed to African American patients having higher average blood creatinine levels than white patients. While these differences in creatinine levels are real, use of a “race-corrected” eGFR likely causes delays in treatment and/or transplantation (Vyas et al., 2020). Bringing “race-based medicine” into the classroom necessitates some interesting, although challenging, discussions as race is a social, rather than biological, construct. However, there are genetic differences in populations that result in differences in risks for some diseases. My intent is to use this topic as a “hook”: a way to raise interest and relevance to students who may not have been very interested in how a mammalian kidney functions.

Prior to making any modifications to the course, I wished to assess students’ attitudes towards sustainability/sustainable development as well as their perception of how well this course focused on sustainability/sustainable development. To that end, I contacted J.D. Walker at UMN’s Center for Educational Innovation (CEI) who helped me design and administer the survey. We surveyed the literature to identify questions used in similar surveys (Balakrishnan et al, 2020; Students Organizing for Sustainability International, 2021) and modified these questions to meet our needs. To increase response rates, we limited the survey to 13 questions to assess student attitudes towards sustainability (Table 2). Additionally, we asked one question about how they perceived the focus of the course with respect to sustainability: “How would you rate this course’s focus on sustainable development. Was it: far too much/somewhat too much/about right/somewhat too little/far too little.” The survey was created in Qualtrics and given to the students using a QR code projected on a screen. Students could then answer anonymously during the last class period of the semester using a smart device. Not surprisingly, students generally indicated that they are very interested in learning about sustainability and sustainable development. I was a bit surprised at how extensively they thought this course addressed these topics.

Table 2. Survey questions about students’ attitudes towards sustainability. Students could respond with the following scale: strongly disagree/disagree/somewhat disagree/neither agree nor disagree/somewhat agree/agree/strongly agree.

Project Assessment

I am creating a group project assignment in for our discussion sections (≥24 students/section) designed for students to apply their ecosystem-health based understanding of topics in animal and human physiology. Small groups of students (3-4) will select a topic related to race-based medicine (Table 1) and design an action plan to address this topic. These groups will then present their findings to the class.

How the modifications to course content ties in with the Environmental Health Education Competencies

The course modifications address the following Ecosystem Health Competency Domains:

• Domain: Characterizing Health at the Animal-Human-Environment Interface
  • Subdomain: Ecosystem health framework and methodologies
  • Subdomain: Health, welfare, and well being
  • Subdomain: Sustainability, resilience, and recovery
  • Subdomain: Bias
• Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice in Ecosystem Health
• Domain: Systems Thinking
• Domain: Communication
• Domain: Inquiry
• Domain: Knowledge to Impact
• Domain: Values and Ethics

References

Balakrishnan, B., Tochinai, F., and Kanemitsu, H. (2020). Perceptions and attitudes towards sustainable development among Malaysian undergraduates. Int. J. Higher Ed. 9: 44-51.

Cerdeña, J.P, Plaisime, M.V., and Tsai, J. (2020) From race-based to race-conscious medicine: how anti-racist uprisings call us to act, Lancet 396: 1125-28.

Students Organizing for Sustainbility International (2021), Students, sustainability and education. https://sos.earth/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/SOS-International-Sustainability-in-Education-International-Survey-Report_FINAL.pdf

Vyas, D.A., Eisenstein, L.G., and Jones, D.S. (2020) Hidden in plain sight- Reconsidering the use of race correction in clinical algorithms. N. Engl. J. Med. 383: 874-882.

Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J. (1998). What is backward design? In Understanding by Design. (1 ed., pp. 7–19). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Acknowledgements

I am particularly grateful to:

• Cathy Jordan for the inspiration for the direction of this project.
• Ilene Alexander for assistance in my redesign of course goals.
• J.D. Walker for helping me construct and administer the course sustainability survey.
• Brian Muthyala for pointing me towards resources about race-based medicine.
• Beth Mercer-Taylor and Joe Warren for excellent support and guidance throughout this process.