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We conducted a meta-analysis to test the impacts of one active learning teaching strategy, group work, on student performance by calculating estimates across 91 studies from 53 articles. Our overall estimate indicates that the implementation of group work in biology classrooms increased student performance by 1.00 standard deviation, which we contextualized as a change greater than one letter grade. Moderator analyses revealed that this increase in performance held across all group sizes, class sizes, biology and life science majors and nonmajors, and whether the groups were assigned by the instructor. However, we did not observe increased performance in graduate level courses, in cases where group work was incorporated for only part of the course term (e.g., less than a semester or quarter) or when the group work was not graded. These results demonstrate that group work leads to impressive boosts in student performance and underscores the value of studying specific active learning strategies.

 

Textbooks shape teaching and learning in introductory biology and highlight scientists as potential role models who are responsible for significant discoveries. We explore a potential demographic mismatch between the scientists featured in textbooks and the students who use textbooks to learn core concepts in biology. We conducted a demographic analysis by extracting hundreds of human names from common biology textbooks and assessing the binary gender and race of featured scientists. We found that the most common scientists featured in textbooks are white men. However, women and scientists of colour are increasingly represented in contemporary scientific discoveries. In fact, the proportion of women highlighted in textbooks has increased in lockstep with the proportion of women in the field, indicating that textbooks are matching a changing demographic landscape. Despite these gains, the scientists portrayed in textbooks are not representative of their target audience—the student population. Overall, very few scientists of colour were highlighted, and projections suggest it could take multiple centuries at current rates before we reach inclusive representation. We call upon textbook publishers to expand upon the scientists they highlight to reflect the diverse population of learners in biology.