What good is modeling? Introducing biology students to theory

TL;DR

This paper presents a graduate course designed to help biology students understand scientific theory through active, evidence-based teaching methods, aiming to enhance critical thinking and scientific progress.

Contribution

It introduces a novel curriculum that bridges empirical and theoretical science for biology students with limited mathematical background.

Findings

Course improved students' understanding of scientific theory.

Active learning methods enhanced engagement and comprehension.

Emphasizing evidence and theory fosters critical thinking.

Abstract

Theory and empirical science should be in constant dialogue, but often find it hard to understand one another. Here we describe a graduate-level university course we developed to improve matters. The course was designed to help empirically-focused biology graduate students read and understand theory papers, despite little prior mathematical training. It uses several evidence-based principles of modern teaching: backwards design, active learning, and just-in-time teaching. We believe that this or similar curricular content, emphasizing the nature of evidence and the role of theory in science, will improve critical thinking and scientific progress.