Are the learning outcomes relevant?
Educational activities should reflect what real people actually do, as biologically literate citizens or employees. Little of their time is spent watching lectures, rather they are involved in application of information — decision-making, problem-solving, investigation, policy analysis, debate, critical thinking, creative thinking, and information-retrieval. These are the activities that should be occurring in the lecture hall, field, and laboratory. Fortuitously, they are also the kinds of activities that create an exhilarating learning environment. All too often biology courses over-emphasize trivial and easy-to-test activities that ask students only to recall, recognize, describe, or “compare and contrast” information that has been memorized. I have observed this weakness on the exams of major universities. Alfred Whitehead noted that “So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing
