About

Defining and Mapping Program-Level
Learning Outcomes for Biology

Biology courses at UBC provide students with amazing opportunities to learn important and exciting material, and to practice a wide variety of skills. This experience helps students prepare for their future careers and their roles as informed citizens of the world. The UBC Biology Skills Project is concerned with defining a comprehensive toolkit of skills and content that a student in the Biology Program should develop by the time they graduate. This list will be generated in consultation with students, faculty, alumni and potential employers. The project team will also see which courses address each of these skills, generating a map of learning outcomes across the Biology curriculum that can be used by faculty, staff and students.

Project Goals

Define program-level learning outcomes in three outcome categories.
Map outcomes across the existing curriculum.
Improve curriculum alignment to increase opportunities for student learning.

Categories of Learning Outcomes

Transferable Skills – Skills that can be applied in fields outside of biology.
Technical Skills – Skills that are specific to the discipline of biology.
Disciplinary Knowledge – Content knowledge in various sub-disciplines of biology.

Project Outcomes

For Faculty

Help instructors understand how the courses they teach contribute to student development of skills among all the courses in the curriculum.
Identify areas where student skill development is out-of-alignment between lower- and upper-lever courses, and where content delivery could be streamlined to reduce duplication.
Identify opportunities to increase student development of transferable skills.

For Students

Develop a map of course content and skills across the curriculum to help student customize their course planning according to their own goals.
Help students identify groups of courses in biology sub-disciplines, or addressing specific skills of interest, to match their interest.
Provide a checklist of skills and knowledge that students can refer to when evaluating their own skill development and applying for positions.
Provide students with information about alumni outcomes to help them make decisions about their future careers.