By every metric that we are able to track, our trial runs of Biology, Beavers, and Bees, Oh My!, have been a huge success. Students love the material, the webinars are engaging, and the narrative approach works. There was one little issue though: I jam-packed the course with too much stuff.
The class as I built it is like a runaway train — it’s a heck of a ride and full of excitement but there’s no opportunity to stop and catch your breath. This is largely because I discovered while building the course that interactive online biology resources have multiplied like the rabbits in our natural selection simulations since I last taught Biology. There’s so much good stuff that it is a disservice to learners to try to fit everything into 16 weeks.
So, beginning in Fall of 2022, Biology, Beavers, and Bees, Oh My! will expand into a two semester offering, with Bees, Genetics, Cell Biology, Natural Selection and Evolution falling (pun intended) in the autumn course and the rest of the material moving into Spring. Further, there will be even more interactivity in the webinars, because this will allow me to run more of our labs and simulations in class time.
So, if your learner is looking to take on a different approach to Biology, we just doubled their opportunity to learn it!
