William B. Wood

In 1965 Sydney Brenner chose free-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a promising model system for a concerted genetic, ultrastructural, and behavioral attack on development and function of a simple nervous system. Since then, with help of a growing number of investigators, knowledge about biology of the worm has accumulated at a steadily accelerating pace to extent that C. elegans is now probably most completely understood metazoan in terms of anatomy, genetics, development, and behavior. The past few years have seen completion of two major long-term projects that provide new insights into C. elegans development and lay important groundwork for future investigation: completion of cell lineages of both sexes, from zygote to adult, and description of complete anatomy at level of electron microscope resolution, providing a complete wiring diagram of cell contacts in animal. Recent years have also brought first successes in molecularly cloning genes of developmental interest defined only by mutation, using transposon tagging as a generally applicable method for identification of desired DNA sequences. Reintroduction of cloned DNA sequences into genome has recently been accomplished. A physical map of genome has been assembled with a combination of cosmid and YAC genes. This Book of Worm serves as a reference source for C. elegans investigators as well as an introductory monograph for other biologists.

Awareness and Adoption of Evidence-Based Instructional Practices by STEM Faculty in the UAE and USA,

We carried out an experiment to determine whether student learning gains in a large, traditionally taught, upper-division lecture course in developmental biology could be increased by partially changing to a more interactive classroom format. In two successive semesters, we presented the same course syllabus using different teaching styles: in fall 2003, the traditional lecture format; and in spring 2004, decreased lecturing and addition of student participation and cooperative problem solving during class time, including frequent in-class assessment of understanding. We used performance on pretests and posttests, and on homework problems to estimate and compare student learning gains between the two semesters. Our results indicated significantly higher learning gains and better conceptual understanding in the more interactive course. To assess reproducibility of these effects, we repeated the interactive course in spring 2005 with similar results. Our findings parallel results of similar teaching-style comparisons made in other disciplines. On the basis of this evidence, we propose a general model for teaching large biology courses that incorporates interactive engagement and cooperative work in place of some lecturing, while retaining course content by demanding greater student responsibility for learning outside of class.