Course Information
The online Masters of Science Teaching of Biological Science program centers on five 8-week, totally online, 500-level biology courses designed explicitly to bring the teachers up-to-date with topics and concepts at the cutting edge of biology. The new courses were designed explicitly for biology teachers, the overall program will thus be extremely relevant to in-service teachers. Course activities, assignments and assessments will be developed to enable conversion into the teacher's classrooms. The courses were also designed specifically for the online environment.
All courses will have an optional synchronous component with meeting times on Tuesday from 7:00 PM EST - 8:30 PM EST. In general, students have to participate in a minimum of 5 out of the 10 synchronous sessions - unless otherwise stated by individual instructor. All courses are 4 credit hours, unless otherwise noted.
Biology Courses
The five courses are:IB 531 - Emerging Infectious Diseases
IB 532 - Sustainability and Global Change
IB 533 - Human Genome and Bioinformatics
IB 534 - Evolution and Medicine
IB 535 - Biology and Tech Innovation
Additionally, three education courses are designed to encourage teachers to embrace the current knowledge of how students learn science and to teach science in an inquiry-based framework. In the third education 'capstone' course, students develop and carry out an action research project focused on the use of curriculum materials integrating the new science learned in the Biology courses. Through this action research project, students in the program learn more about their own teaching practices and their students’ learning of science.
Education Courses
The three Education courses are:CI 541 - Learning in Science
CI 544 - Science Inquiry and Educational Reform
CI 548 - Capstone Project I (2 Hours) & II (2 Hours)