Introduction: promoting concept driven teaching strategies in biochemistry and molecular biology.

The American Society For Biochemistry And Molecular Biology (ASBMB) long ago (about 10–12 years) recognized both the changing nature of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (in reality all of the molecular life sciences) and the ways we need to educate our students (not just our science majors but all students) in the molecular life sciences. All students need to appreciate and understand the broad conceptual areas of the discipline, the interdisciplinary nature of much current and future science, as well as the process of science in terms of both its approaches to problems and the cross disciplinary foundational concepts that can contribute to a clearer understanding of life processes, goals that align well with those of vision and change 1. A major rationale for this is that modern molecular life science is increasingly interdisciplinary, both from the conceptual perspective and from the experimental perspective, and that the advances of the future will increasingly be made at the interface between the disciplines 2. Students, therefore, need to understand both foundational disciplinary concepts and how they relate to broader interdisciplinary concepts as well as broad themes from the allied field disciplines of Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science in addition to process of science skills that are often common to all the scientific disciplines. This places an increased emphasis on presenting the essential concepts and themes from the allied fields in the context of the molecular life sciences, either in traditional Biochemistry and Molecular Biology courses or in the currently emerging “blended” courses 3-5 that bring together the foundations of Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics/Computer Science in the context of the molecular life sciences. To address these challenges ASBMB applied for, and was awarded, a grant from the National Science Foundation (The Undergraduate Biology Education track in the Research Coordination Network program (RCN-UBE) Award number 0957205 “RCN-UBE: Promoting Concept Driven Teaching Strategies in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology through Concept Assessments,” Ellis Bell, PI). As part of this project, the Project Steering group was split into three groups, one focusing on the foundational concepts of the discipline, one on critical concepts of the allied fields of Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics, and one on the necessary skills (in their broadest sense) that a student should have upon graduation. These topics were discussed extensively over the past 2 years in a series of regional workshop meetings involving hundreds of educators from a wide variety of institutions including major research universities, liberal arts colleges, and minority serving institutions geographically located across the country, and well attended sessions at both the Annual Experimental Biology National Meeting and the ASBMB sponsored small education meeting. The three papers presented in this special section resulted from the working group's analysis of the input from these meetings. They include some sample learning objectives with the goal of guiding future efforts of the project to develop assessment tools aligned with this consensus. The titles of the papers are: “Foundational Concepts & Underlying Theories for Majors in ‘Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’” John T. Tansey, Teaster Baird Jr., Michael Cox, Kristin Fox, Jennifer Knight, Duane Sears, and Ellis Bell. “What Skills Should Graduates of Undergraduate Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Programs Have Upon graduation?” Harold B. White, Marilee A. Benore, Takita F. Sumter, Benjamin D. Caldwell, and Ellis Bell. “Essential Concepts & Underlying Theories from Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics for ‘Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’ Majors” Ann Wright, Joseph Provost, Jennifer A. Roecklein-Canfield, and Ellis Bell. These three papers represent a consensus of the knowledge and skills that biochemistry and molecular biology majors should have upon graduation with a degree in biochemistry and molecular biology or, (recognizing the existence of separate degrees) biochemistry. We have not suggested how this might be taught in terms of individual course content recognizing that there are a wide variety of combinations of courses that together in a program might accomplish the overall goal of students mastering these areas and skills. We would also encourage the use of this framework when considering the design of courses for non science majors. The Society's RCN-UBE grant is now focusing on aligning the identified conceptual areas and skills with the development of appropriate assessment tools and the creation of a web-based toolkit for educators. We have suggested some sample learning objectives in the three papers, not to be prescriptive but to illustrate the types of learning objectives that can then provide a basis for developing appropriate questions that can be used to gauge student understanding. We hope that these three papers will help focus the community's efforts both on curricula reform to align both course and program curricula with the concepts of “Vision and Change” and promote the use of assessment tools that are aligned with the appropriate foundational disciplinary and interdisciplinary concepts, as well as skills, necessary for our students to successfully complete their undergraduate education.