BioInteractive’s Free Online Professional Learning Course on Evolution

Abstract

Teachers are eager for professional development on teaching evolution, especially if it includes direct ties to relevant curricula and detailed lesson plans. Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s BioInteractive Online Professional Learning: Evolution course was developed to provide educators with free, in-depth, multimedia resources that highlight important scientific concepts and studies in evolution and engage participants through interactive activities that link to student resources. Our goals in the development of the asynchronous, nonfacilitated course were to (1) deepen teachers’ content knowledge of evolutionary concepts essential to NGSS and AP Biology courses, (2) increase teachers’ confidence and comfort in teaching evolution content to general biology and AP Biology students, (3) have teachers identify major evolutionary concepts in scientific studies, authentic data, or educational media used to teach evolution, and (4) assist teachers in identifying and incorporating relevant BioInteractive resources to illustrate evolutionary content and science practices in their own course(s). Our results from a postcourse survey that included pre-post retrospective confidence questions suggest that the course improved educators’ knowledge in evolution and their confidence in teaching evolutionary topics. Overall, this course provides educators the opportunity to deepen their content knowledge and obtain exciting, relevant, and reliable resources to use in their classrooms.