Evolutionary Medicine: Teaching Resources for Science Courses

If you teach a college biology course, you are probably aware that most biology majors are interested in a medical career (Cooper et al. 2019). While many sub-disciplines in biology traditionally cater to the interests of students focused on medical careers, it is common for premed students to think that evolution has nothing to do with medicine. However, that is changing with the rise of a relatively new, but rapidly growing, field called evolutionary medicine (EvMed). EvMed is a discipline that applies lenses and tools from evolutionary biology and anthropology to enrich our understanding of human health and disease. It explores questions such as: Why are we more likely to develop cancer as we age? Why are certain pathologies, like obesity and autoimmune disorders, becoming increasingly common in developed nations? And why have patterns of children’s growth and development changed over the past century?

Currently, over half of the major research institutions in the US now offer at least one full-semester course in EvMed (Grunspan et al 2019). However, a full-semester course is not the only way to teach about the ways in which evolution applies to human health and disease. EvMed can be incorporated into general evolution courses and health-related courses as a module or even as one-off examples. For example, EvMed can be incorporated into an immunology course by asking what is the evolutionary benefit of fever. It can also be integrated into a physiology course by asking about high altitude adaptations for oxygen delivery. A benefit of including EvMed content in a course on evolution, especially for students interested in medical careers, is that it provides them with an opportunity to learn evolutionary concepts in a personally relevant context. Health- or medicine-related courses can benefit from EvMed by prompting students to consider how an evolutionary perspective might inform healthcare practices.

So, how can biology instructors incorporate EvMed into their curriculum? There is currently a wide array of publicly available instructional resources for most of the traditional sub-disciplines of biology, especially at the introductory level. EvMed, however, is a comparatively new area of study, and as such does not have many of these resources. One recent study found that many EvMed instructors acquire teaching resources such as lecture slides and reading lists directly from other colleagues (Grunspan et al. 2019). But what can instructors who don’t know other EvMed instructors do?

We are currently using the framework of backwards design to build an online, publicly available repository of EvMed teaching resources called EvMedEd that could be freely available to any instructor. Effective instruction requires focusing on the most important core ideas of a discipline. For this reason, we first consulted an international and interdisciplinary panel of experts to construct a consensus list of core concepts for EvMed that instructors could use to develop learning goals when teaching EvMed (Grunspan et al. 2018). By aligning course learning goals with the core concepts, instructors can ensure that their curriculum is designed to teach the most important theoretical principles of the discipline. We are also using the core principles to develop an assessment for EvMed. This assessment is intended to test students’ ability to apply core concepts and use evolutionary reasoning. Test questions are inspired by a wide array of studies in the EvMed research literature. These questions are being designed to be used as both a bank of questions to be used as needed, and as a single test that could be given at the beginning and end of a term.

Finally, we are constructing active-learning teaching modules that use EvMed case studies to teach the core principles. For example, one module explores why humans experience risky childbirth by examining two alternative hypotheses. This module is designed to teach the core concepts of trade-offs and evolutionary constraints, along with broader scientific skills such as data interpretation and hypothesis testing. Each module will come with lesson materials and resources for the instructor. The lesson materials will include lecture slides, student handouts, assessment questions, and classroom activities. Instructor resources will include (1) a summary text that provides a brief overview of the case study and its associated questions and theories, (2) short descriptions of how the case can be used to teach certain core concepts, (3) teaching instructions for the lesson materials, and (4) a list of relevant scholarly and non-scholarly articles, which can also be used as assigned reading for students.

All of these projects contribute to the overarching goal of building the EvMedEd website, which will host all of these educational materials. Currently, EvMedEd is a repository of useful teaching resources such as books, articles, videos, and website links about EvMed. The EvMed teaching modules will be a major new feature on the EvMedEd site. These modules will be organized in a way that allows users to find modules according to core concept or health topic of interest. A user interested in teaching the concept of life history trade-offs could quickly find health examples to supplement their instruction, while someone interested in teaching about cancer could find modules about how evolution informs our understanding of cancer.

EvMedEd Navigator organizes Medically Relevant Examples of evolution (MREs) by the evolutionary medicine principles they apply and the health topics they fall under.

Combined, we hope that these resources will help instructors who might be interested in teaching EvMed teach in ways that are aligned with the core principles of evolutionary medicine. We are always on the lookout for people to help contribute to EvMedEd, so please contact Dan Grunspan at dgrunspan@asu.edu if you would like to get involved!

Works Cited

1. Cooper, Katelyn M., Logan E. Gin, and Sara E. Brownell. 2019. Diagnosing Differences in What Introductory Biology Students in a Fully Online and an In-Person Biology Degree Program Know and Do Regarding Medical School Admission. Advances in Physiology Education 43(2): 221–232.
   
2. Grunspan, Daniel Z., Randolph M. Nesse, M. Elizabeth Barnes, and Sara E. Brownell. 2018. Core Principles of Evolutionary MedicineA Delphi Study. Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health 2018(1): 13–23
   
3. Grunspan, Daniel Z., Karla T. Moeller, Randolph M. Nesse, and Sara E. Brownell. 2019. The State of Evolutionary Medicine in Undergraduate Education. Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health 2019(1): 82–92.

Post author:

Taya Misheva is a PhD student in the Biology and Society program in the School of Life Sciences at ASU, where she is a member of Sara Brownell’s Biology Education Research lab. Taya does research on evolutionary medicine instruction and student acceptance of evolution. She is especially interested in exploring factors that influence students’ acceptance of human evolution, as well as searching for more effective and inclusive strategies for teaching evolutionary anthropology.