Creating and Assessing an Academic Learning Community between Biology and Statistics Courses

摘要

Biology students need analytical and critical thinking skills to analyze data and apply their knowledge to real-life situations. To meet this growing need while helping students to discover the relevance of learning through applications, we created an academic learning community (LC) between Ecology and Biostatistics courses. Selected case-studies and their corresponding data from the Ecology lab were incorporated into Biostatistics. Our data demonstrated that the LC group might have improved their statistical knowledge and their understanding of ecological problems more than the non-LC group and that LC promoted interactions among students and between instructors and students. We discuss key criteria that permitted the LC development, the evidence of its effectiveness, limitations of this study, and ways to improve the LC.