This quarter-long project forms the basis of a third-year course for majors and nonmajors at the University of Washington, Bothell called Science Methods and Practice. Students use databases to identify novel research questions, and extract data to test their hypotheses. They frame the question with primary literature, address the questions with inferential statistics, and discuss the results with more primary literature. The product is a scientific paper; each step of the process is scaffolded and evaluated. Given time limitations, we avoid devoting time to data collection; instead, we sharpen
students' ability to make sense of a large body of quantitative data, a situation they may rarely have encountered.

We treat statistics with a strictly conceptual, pragmatic, and abbreviated approach; i.e., we ask students to know which basic test to choose to assess a linear relationship vs. a difference between two means. We stress the need for a normal distribution
in order to use these tests, and how to interpret the results; we leave the rest for stats courses, and we do not teach the mathematics. This approach proves beneficial even to those who have already had a statistics course, because it is often the first time
they make decisions about applying statistics to their own research questions.

We incorporate peer review and collaborative work throughout the quarter. We form collaborative groups around the research questions they ask, enabling them to share primary literature they find, and preparing them well to review each other's writing. We encourage them to cite each other's work. They write formal peer reviews of each other's papers, and they submit their final paper with a letter-to-the-editor highlighting how their research has addressed previous feedback.

A major advantage of this course is that an instructor can easily modify it to suit any area of expertise. Students have worked with data about how a snail's morphology changes in response to its environment (Price, 2012), how students understand genetic drift (Price et al. 2014), maximum body size in the fossil record (Payne et al. 2008), range shifts (Ettinger et al. 2011), and urban crop pollination (Waters and Clifford 2014).

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Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Define population genetics and describe how population genetics is used in the study of the evolution of populationsDefine the Hardy-Weinberg principle and discuss its importance

Humans may have been around for a long time, but life has existed for way longer. In this episode of Crash Course Biology, we’ll journey through deep time to uncover the history of life on Earth. We’ll explore the big, game-changing leaps where life diversified, changed, and just plain persisted.

Introduction: How Life Began
Macroevolution
RNA & DNA
The Timeline of Life
Stromatolites & Fossils
Dr. Meeman Chang
Drivers of Macroevolution
Review & Credits
Credits

Open courseware for Macroevolution, focusing on research methods and software packages, such as R.

Course description
Evolutionary thinking provides the underpinnings of modern biology. In recent decades, the field of macroevolution (evolution above the species level) has matured into a rich discipline with a well-developed mathematical theory for testing hypotheses of species diversification, for understanding trait evolution, and evaluating patterns of covariation across the tree of life. This course will provide a synthetic view of biology and how life on earth has changed over time.

Course Outcomes
Upon completion of the course, students will:
Understand patterns of diversity in the fossil record, and changes in that diversity over time
Understand macroevolutionary patterns and processes, and the difference between gradualism, stasis, and punctuated equilibrium
Become familiar with ‘tree thinking’, and understand the principles of using a phylogenetic perspective to address evolutionary questions in biology
Gain experience in applying cutting-edge phylogenetic methods for testing hypotheses in macroevolution