Unlocking understanding in undergraduate evolution education

Suegene Noh wrote this blog post with input from Nancy Chen, Alejandra Carmago-Cely, Kiyoko Gotanda, Amanda Puitiza, Lucia Ramirez, Juleyska Vasquez-Cardona, Yaamini Venkataraman

A version of this post is also published on the Genes to Genomes blog https://genestogenomes.org/unlocking-understanding-in-undergraduate-evolution-education/ 

Teaching is an integral part of many of our jobs as academics, so collaborating with like-minded scientists and scholars to think about how best to present biological concepts to students can be a valuable and rewarding experience. More critically, the way we teach evolution in undergraduate courses, particularly how we address student misconceptions or address the legacy of harmful ideologies, can have important impacts on student social beliefs and senses of belonging in science. 

The RIE2 (Resources for Inclusive Evolution Education) organizing committee is composed of 8 women of color at various career stages in the field of evolutionary biology (i.e. Ph.D Candidates, Postdoctoral Researchers, Assistant Professors, and Associate Professors) who came together at a National Science Foundation and Dartmouth College funded Networks of Success conference organized by the Women and Non-Binary People of Colour in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. We developed this initiative to increase the accessibility of teaching resources that improve and deepen the understanding of evolutionary concepts that are prone to misuse. We conceptualized a working group that would convene participants from the fields of evolutionary biology, science, technology, and society studies (STS), history of science, and education to co-create such resources (https://qubeshub.org/community/groups/rie2). To this end, we invited two external scholars (Dr. Banu Subramanian, Wellesley College, STS, and Dr. Angela Google, University of Rhode Island, Biology Education) as consultants to assist with building bridges across disciplines and provide feedback during resource creation.

We first developed an online repository of educational materials provided by educators (https://qubeshub.org/community/groups/rie2/resources). We subsequently recruited participants through society listservs, social media, personal networks, and email outreach to department chairs. From these potential participants, we invited participants at the beginning of June 2024 with a goal of balancing career stages and geographical locations.  

We started the first RIE2 working groups at a kick-off event on June 17, 2024. At this event we set community guidelines for how to work together and held a workshop inclusive practices in STEM teaching with Dr. Corrie Moreau (Cornell University). From thereon, participants were organized into two timelines based on preference. The short timeline groups (13 participants in two groups: adaptation and genotype-by-phenotype association) were slated to wrap up resource creation by the end of August 2024. The long timeline groups (18 participants in 3 groups: genetic drift, natural selection, and phenotypic plasticity) were slated to wrap up resource creation by the end of February 2025. We provided both sets of groups with virtual community check-in meetings with opportunities for immediate peer feedback and with scaffolded deadlines for teaching resource components. Individual working groups self-organized to create components of teaching modules over the subsequent weeks or months. 

With funding from the American Genetics Association, the European Society for Evolutionary Biology, Genetics Society of America, the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution, our initiative has supported 30 total participants, including 7 organizers, in creating inclusive resources for teaching evolution. Our participants comprised 10 faculty, 7 postdocs, 10 grad students, and 3 independent scholars. Given our goal of critically examining eugenic and settler-colonial underpinnings of the field of evolutionary biology in the process of the initiative, we were excited to have 5 STS scholars included in our participants. Our first iteration working groups focused on five topics: adaptation, genotype-phenotype associations, natural selection, genetic drift, and phenotypic plasticity. Five modules have been published to QUBES (https://qubeshub.org/community/groups/rie2/publications). As of May 31, 2025, the five modules together have been viewed 1888 times and downloaded 949 times. 

Based on the number of downloads and individual comments received, we expect these modules to be broadly useful for instructors interested in offering more inclusive takes on these complex evolutionary concepts. To better assess their impact, we have recently partnered with Dr. Robin Costello (University at Buffalo, Biology education) to create a survey to quantify student outcomes based on application of our teaching modules in a course setting. One of us, Dr. Suegene Noh at Colby College, had the opportunity to teach the Genetic Drift module in March 2025. This module includes six new activities developed by the genetic drift working group over the past nine months. The survey results revealed that student understanding of genetic drift, as measured using the Genetic Drift Inventory, significantly increased. More importantly, students were more inclined to agree that society affects the way scientific knowledge is built and how scientific knowledge is applied. The unique activities in our module, including the one that engages with Queer theory, helped students more readily make this connection to society.

We believe our working group initiative was a success. So far we’ve collected anonymous feedback from the participants of the short timeline. They reacted positively to meeting and collaborating with other participants from different institutions and countries. A total of 8 participants were not based in the United States and their experience with different education systems and curriculums provided valuable input into the module development. We are excited to see our modules in use in the world and welcome any feedback instructors have. We will continue assessing the impact of the resources created during this first iteration, and we hope to organize additional working groups in the future.