Degree programme initiative: Biology according to first principles

The initiative «Biology according to first principles» aimed to revise biology education at ETH by introducing an innovative curriculum rooted in first principles. This new curriculum has been designed to offer students a comprehensive, integrated education in modern biology that equips them to tackle current and future challenges and prepares them for various careers in biologically or medically oriented fields and beyond.
To achieve this goal, the first two years of the Bachelor (BSc) biology program have been restructured and organized around foundational principles, tracing the evolutionary progression of life from prokaryotes to eukaryotes. The relevance of this project is underscored by the profound impact biology has on various aspects of society. Understanding different life forms, their evolution, and functions is essential in the anthropocene, where human activities heavily influence climate, environment, nutrition, and disease. In addition, biological discoveries offer opportunities in biotechnology, drug and therapy development, and material science.
The project aimed to address the challenges many traditional biology curricula face. First, biology is a rapidly evolving field, and study programs struggle to keep up with the rapidly expanding body of biological knowledge. Second, modern biology exceeds its traditional boundaries, incorporating principles from chemistry, physics, mathematics, informatics, and emerging fields like bioinformatics and modeling. However, these sciences are often taught asynchronously to biology training, which impedes providing students with an integrated, multidisciplinary perspective on biology. Moreover, biology curricula are often overloaded and emphasize rote memorization and isolated facts rather than conceptual understanding. Thus, it is challenging for students to grasp the cohesive, overarching concepts that underlie the field.
Ultimately, the initiative aimed at developing an innovative curriculum with clearly defined learning objectives and a common thread that provides a holistic education in biology, deeply rooted in chemistry, physics, mathematics, and informatics. Fostering critical thinking was also a central learning objective and addressing key unanswered questions in biology. The new curriculum aimed to educate critical, open-minded, and creative students who can excel in academia and private industry. This redefined curriculum, «Biology according to first principles,» is unique and sets itself apart from traditional biology programs, thus it has the potential to serve as a model for modern biology curricula elsewhere.

Several strategies ensured an effective redesign of the teaching practice within the biology curriculum. The project redefined not only the content but also the methodology, promoting critical thinking and interdisciplinary understanding while creating a cohesive and aligned curriculum.
1. Redesigned Curriculum: The project involved a complete overhaul of the curriculum with all lectures in the first two years being restructured. This resulted in eight new lectures and three new practical courses. The overall design was developed by a mandated group consisting of faculty, the D-BIOL educational developer and head of Center for Active learning (CAL), students, emeriti, and study coordinator. In addition, service lectures were adapted in collaboration with the respective departments. The entire DBIOL faculty and student representatives had opportunities to provide feedback at departmental conferences and retreats.
2. Introduction of exercises: To foster active learning and critical thinking and assess student understanding, exercise sessions were introduced as an inherent part across all lectures. Receiving regular feedback on students’ learning progress is informative to students and lecturers to adapt learning and teaching.
3. Emphasis on interdisciplinarity: To highlight the interconnections between biology and relevant disciplines such as mathematics, special exercises like «Math Meets Biology» and «Biology in Numbers» were adopted in the first-year biology classes. In addition, selected guest lectures from other disciplines, i.e. Earth and Environmental Sciences, were integrated into the biology program.
4. Joint faculty effort: A key aspect of the reform was collaboration on defining goals and teaching content, which was achieved by discussing and sharing teaching contents, goals and material during the implementation phase. This ensured that a common understanding of learning content was developed. More than 90% of the D-BIOL professors (full and titular) are teaching in the first two years of the curriculum.
5. Alignment: Curriculum coherence is maintained with the support of the CAL at D-BIOL. First, the D-BIOL educational developer and head of CAL was involved in the curriculum redesign process (see above). Second, each new lecture has a designated CAL course coordinator (educational developer or senior teaching specialist) who helps aligning learning goals, facilitates communication with students, supports the design and implementation of exercises, manages the learning platform, and provides exam support.
6. Textbook Development: To enhance student’s learning experience, efforts have been initiated by the faculty to write a textbook that aligns with the new curriculum, which will provide students with a comprehensive reference complementing their coursework.

The new biology curriculum was successfully introduced in 2020. Notable achievements include course development and the incorporation of exercises. Crucial to the projects’ success was the collaborative definition of learning goals, ensuring a common understanding among faculty and students. In our new curriculum, we reached a remarkable faculty involvement, with 90% of all D-BIOL professors (full and titular) participating in teaching during the initial two years. This greatly contributes to a shared teaching understanding at D-BIOL and an equal distribution of faculty contributions.
Although the curriculum was launched under challenging conditions, the pandemic had unexpected benefits, since all lectures were recorded and made available to the faculty. These recordings became valuable resources to align and adapt lectures for lectures.
Our educational objective to nurture critical, open-minded, and creative thinkers was addressed by introducing exercises and emphasizing interdisciplinarity. Key unanswered questions were highlighted and opportunities created for students to engage with topics (e.g., in group exercises “How can we address the antibiotic crisis?” or “What can plants do for us?”). Although quantifying the achievement of this goal is challenging, anecdotal faculty reports indicate that current third-year students are more critically-minded and engaged. As the project is still relatively recent, a more comprehensive assessment will become feasible as more students progress through the program. Empirical studies (see below) are planned to monitor goal achievement.
To investigate students› learning, we developed a test to assess conceptual understanding and evaluated first-semester students in the new curriculum, finding that a storytelling approach improves their grasp of fundamental biological concepts (Tobler et al. 2023, doi.org/10.1187/cbe.22-05-0097). This aligns with the aim of the new curriculum to present biology as a narrative, following the evolutionary path of life. Ongoing studies with first- and third-semester students will compare their conceptual understanding in the new and previous curriculum to assess effectiveness of the new approach.
Students› progress in the new curriculum was followed by interviewing students after their first and second study year in two successive cohorts. In 2021, we also had all lectures exceptionally evaluated to solicit feedback from two cohorts, leading to improved curriculum coherence.
We expected our curriculum to become a model for future biology programs and contribute to ETH’s international visibility. The textbook initiative complementing the curriculum will enhance the project’s visibility. Interest from other universities in the curriculum and presentations by the project leader indicates that the initiative has generated attention beyond ETH.