Course content

Lesson 1: Why biology? The purpose of the school subject and the profile of biology education

Lesson 2: Thinking from the perspective of learners: The Model of Educational Reconstruction

Lesson 3: More than knowledge: Focus on educational standards and competence orientation

Lesson 4: Competence area of knowledge acquisition: Experimentation

Lesson 5: Competence area of knowledge acquisition: Modeling

Lesson 6: Competence area of communication

Lesson 7: Competence area of evaluation and decision-making 

Lesson 8: Digital technologies for teaching and learning biology

Lesson 9: Shaping the future: Sustainability, climate education, and global learning

Lesson 10: Health education

Lesson 11: Sex education

Lesson 12: Embracing uncertainty: Dealing with uncertainty in biology lessons

Lesson 13: Designing biology lessons with sensitivity to diversity

Lesson 14: The fascination of diversity: Species knowledge in biology lessons

Lesson 15: From concept to lesson: Lesson planning

Lesson 16: Reflexivity and teacher professionalism

Learning goals

The Biology-Education-MOOC introduces you to the design of educational processes related to biology and the teaching and learning of biology. You will develop the fundamentals of what is known as professional knowledge for biology teachers.

Biology teaching professionalism is characterised by the combination of sound subject knowledge with subject-specific teaching skills, enabling teachers to convey complex scientific phenomena in a student-oriented manner and to adapt learning processes based on current educational research.

Participants develop and use theoretical concepts and models for planning, designing, and reflecting on biology lessons.

Prerequisites

Previous experience in biology education is not required.

Course schedule

The Biology-Education-MOOC comprises 16 units, each consisting of at least (i) a learning video (max. 10-12 minutes), (ii) in-depth tasks, (iii) additional sources and materials, and (iiii) a learning assessment.

Each unit has a specific workload, so that completion of all units and the certificate obtained corresponds to a workload of one ECTS (maximum 2 hours per lesson).

Upon request, the certificate can also be awarded as a microcredential for a digital portfolio such as EUROPASS.

Individual units can also be completed. Upon successful completion, participants receive a “badge.”

For actively participating in the course you will receive an automatic certificate which includes your name, the course name as well as the completed lessons. We want to point out that this certificate merely confirms that you answered at least 75% of the self-assessment questions correctly.

This work is licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.de

When naming the CC license, please mention the authors and Fachsektion Didaktik der Biologie (FDdB).

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