Author Description

Rethinking biology means rethinking the text, the visual program, and assessment. Ordinarily, textbooks are developed by first writing chapters, then making decisions about art and images, and finally, once the book is complete, assembling a test bank and ancillary media. This process dramatically limits the integration across resources, and reduces art, media, and assessments to ancillary material, rather than essential resources for student learning. Biology: How Life Works is the first project to develop three pillars—the text, the visual program, and the assessment—at the same time. All three pillars were developed in parallel to make sure that each idea is addressed in the most appropriate medium, and to ensure authentic integration. These three pillars are all tied to the same set of core concepts, share a common language, and use the same visual palette. In this way, the text, visual program, and assessments are integral parts of student learning, rather than just accessories to the text. RETHINKING THE TEXT Integrated Biology: How Life Works moves away from a focus on disparate topics, towards an integrated approach. Chemistry is presented in context, structure and function are covered together, the flow of information in a cell is introduced where it makes the most conceptual sense, and cases serve as a framework for connecting and assimilating information. Selective Biology: How Life Works was envisioned not as a reference book for all of biology, but a resource focused on foundational concepts, terms, and experiments. This allows students to more easily identify, understand, and apply critical concepts, and develop a framework on which to build their understanding of biology. Thematic Biology: How Life Works was written with six themes in mind. Introduced in Chapter 1 and revisited throughout, these themes provide a framework that helps students see biology as a set of connected concepts. In particular, the theme of evolu