Teaching with core concepts to facilitate the integrated learning of introductory organismal biology

Despite the call from biology educators for students to learn the biological sciences as a unified whole, the teaching of introductory organismal biology is still largely arranged into separate sections that tend to focus exclusively on the biology of individual taxonomic categories (i.e., animals and plants). Conversely, this paper presents a strategy for combining the teaching and learning of introductory animal and plant biology using the core concepts of biology and physiology as tools for integrative learning. The paper outlines the positioning of organismal biology within a two-semester introductory biology course, the topical organization of an integrated organismal biology module around shared physiological functions, the use of core concepts to facilitate the combined learning of the biology of animals and plants, and some instructional practices that can support core concepts as learning tools for organismal biology. Examples of how core concepts serve to integrate the organismal biology of animals and plants are described and explained. The goal of this approach is to show introductory students that the mastery of core concepts can help them integrate their understanding of organismal biology. More broadly, students acquire skills in using core concepts as learning tools in biology that should enable them to better assimilate more advanced concepts and to achieve a more unified study of the biological sciences as they progress through the curriculum.NEW & NOTEWORTHY This paper is 1) a personal view on why the teaching of introductory animal and plant biology ought to be more integrated and how an integrated module for introductory organismal biology can be designed, and 2) a practical guide to instructors on how core concepts can be used as learning tools to promote the integrated learning of introductory organismal biology.