Fundamentals of Biology IA
About the course
'Fundamentals of Biology IA' ('Grundlagen der Biologie IA', 551-0105-00L) is a core lecture in the bachelor curricula of Biology, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Interdisciplinary Studies. It is taught during the first semester for 5 hours weekly and attended by approximately 300 students.
This course is taught by Prof. Markus Aebi, Prof. Matthias Peter, and Prof. Ernst Hafen.
CAL support
In the first part of the course, taught by Prof. Aebi, students mainly work on online lessons to prepare for the lecture and on multiple-choice quizzes to assess their understanding afterwards.
The second part, taught by Prof. Hafen, follows a flipped-classroom approach where 2 hours each week are dedicated to group work, exercises and discussions. Some topics are solely taught in a self-study mode. For group-work activities, students are arranged in groups and assigned to teaching assistants for the whole semester. Within the groups, the students carry out one to four projects, for example, writing of a popular science article, or the planning of a genetic experiment including a conference-style poster presentation.
For their participation in course activities, students can gather bonus points counting for their exam. The final exam is conducted as an electronic exam.
New during the HS2018 course is the opportunity for students to virtually explore basic biological concepts using advanced virtual laboratory technology through the external page "Labster" simulation software. Two virtual labs are offered within the course: external page Mitosis and external page Meiosis.
The large number of students participating in online activities enable us to perform various learning analytics, such as a pre- and post-test, analysis of student performance in the online activities, and a student evaluation.
