Redesign a biology introduction course to promote life consciousness

Abstract

To guide students to make reasonable decisions in the face of adversity and pressure, a new general course named ‘Introduction of Life Education’ was established. The course was organized based on the knowledge of biological science, with the integration of social scientific issues on life health, food safety, environmental protection and sustainable development. The course focuses as much on life philosophy and natural charm as on scientific facts and aims to promote students’ life consciousness on the basis of cultivating their critical thinking and integrative thinking abilities. In this study, subjective assessments such as classroom and official questionnaires and objective assessments such as pre-class and post class tests were used, and the role of the course in cultivating students’ life consciousness and thinking abilities was evaluated. It was found that students’ knowledge on life attributes and life characteristics significantly improved, and their critical thinking and integrative thinking abilities enhanced after the course. Students were interested in the social-biological integrated course, and had high levels of satisfaction with the course. The course is helpful in cultivating students to be scientifically literate citizens, and is worth popularizing in universities and colleges.

Keywords:

• Undergraduate general course
• life education
• biological knowledge
• life consciousness
• critical thinking
• integrative thinking

REVIEWING EDITOR:

• Stephen Darwin, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile

SUBJECTS:

• Natural History - Evolution and General Biology
• Biology
• General Science
• Environment & Health
• Biodiversity & Conservation
• Higher Education
• Education - Social sciences

Introduction

The primary goal of education is to cultivate students’ personalities, responsibilities and scientific literacy (Rowe et al., 2015). However, recent studies have shown that higher education appears to be insufficient to the task (Bruffaerts et al., 2018). To make students adapt to society in better ways, an increasing number of colleges have focused their teaching objectives on cultivating students’ personality rather than on cultivating scientific experts by emphasizing the importance of general education. General education strives to deliver an academic experience that fosters intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, self-reflection, leadership and teamwork skills and therefore empowers students to transform their learning into meaningful action (Mahaffy et al., 2019). General education has been traditionally carried out based on the knowledge of liberal arts; and currently, science-based general education is becoming increasingly popular (Wells, 2016). Science-based general courses, with their focus on evidence and logic, are conducive to the cultivation of scientific literacy among citizens (Rowe et al., 2015). However, most currently general science courses, especially introductory courses, overemphasize scientific ‘facts’ rather than the nature of science. They fail to connect ‘science as a way of knowing’ with decisions faced by students in their daily lives, and therefore are insufficient in cultivating students’ critical thinking and integrative thinking abilities (Sanchez-Muñoz et al., 2020).

Critical thinking is a skill to apply logic and reasoning to identify strengths and weaknesses in arguments and make reasonable judgments (Dessie et al., 2024). To think critically, students should reflect on their thinking process, evaluate possible solutions, and finally make a decision. While integrative thinking, also known as interdisciplinary thinking, is a skill to understand the intertwined, co-influential interactions between several diverse perspectives (Kowalski et al., 2021). To think integratively, students should understand disciplinary perspectives and then move beyond disciplinary boundaries to explore the synergistic benefits, as well as potential conflicts, between disciplines.

Due to the lack of critical thinking and integrative thinking skills, some people are prone to make unwise decisions in the face of adversity or psychological pressure (Liu et al., 2019). It has been reported that approximately 800,000 people commit suicide yearly around the world, and as many as 200 times that number are said to have made unsuccessful suicide attempts (World Health Organization [WHO], 2017). Suicide has become the second leading cause of death for 15- to 29-year-old people, especially in developing countries (Shen et al., 2021). In addition to the incidents of not cherishing one’s own life, there have also been many incidents of not respecting the lives of others (Alós-Ferrer et al., 2022). Some students hurt their classmates with violence, some students poisoned their roommates with chemicals, and some students abused weak animals just for fun (Wu, 2020). It seems that citizen education is more important and urgent than ever before (Lüsse et al., 2022).

In addition to social problems, there are also many environmental problems or health problems that need critical thinking and integrative thinking to find effective solutions (Kowalski et al., 2021). Greenhouse effects, food security, environmental pollution, loss of biodiversity and epidemic diseases not only threaten the health of contemporary people but also destroy the survival basis for future generations (Rounsevell et al., 2020; Vesterinen, 2024). Thus, developing students’ abilities to use integrative thinking to critically analyze, evaluate, and attempt to address complex issues is an important goal of higher education. The European Science Education Research Association has recommended incorporating health and environmental issues in science education and proposed that such a pedagogical approach is helpful in cultivating students’ critical thinking and scientific knowledge and further promoting students’ scientific literacy (Zeyer, 2022).

To improve students’ life awareness and cultivate their critical thinking and integrative thinking skills, we intend to set up a transdisciplinary general science course, in which the life attributes and life characteristics are introduced. However, no similar courses have been reported hitherto. The courses about life education currently established are all liberal arts-dominated, which emphasize the knowledge of life philosophy and social culture but pay little attention to human health, environmental protection and biodiversity preservation. For this, we established a novel course titled ‘Introduction of Life Education (ILE)’ based on rearranging the contents of ‘Introduction of Biological Sciences’, with the integration of social scientific issues (SSI) on life health, food safety, environmental protection and sustainable development. The course focuses as much on life philosophy and natural charm as on scientific facts and aims to promote students’ life consciousness on the basis of cultivating their critical thinking and integrative thinking abilities.

The goal of the present study was to address three primary research questions. (1) How to construct the theoretical framework and main contents of the ILE course? (2) Are students interested in the SSI-integrated ILE course? (3) How effective was the course at building upon students’ life consciousness and developing their critical thinking and integrative thinking?

Methods

Course resources and participants

The ILE course was originally established in 2017, with 24 hours of class time (in 8 weeks) and an offline teaching mode. In 2020, a textbook was published (Wu, 2020), and a massive open online course (MOOC) was constructed (https://www.icourse163.org/course/ZJU-1206447846), which included 56 video files, a final test bank, 8 unit-quiz banks and approximately 60 discussion topics (Table S1). From the 2020–2021 academic year on, a mixed online and offline teaching mode was adopted.

The ILE course is an optional course with no prerequisite. Most of the students are freshmen, with a male to female ratio of approximately 1:1. From the perspective of specialty distribution, liberal arts students, engineering students and science students each account for approximately 30%. Only a few overseas students joined the course (Table S2).

The official questionnaire was administered online by the university academic affairs office during the final week of each semester (http://zulte.zju.edu.cn/admin), on which questions such as resource richness, teaching quality, course value, and satisfaction level were asked (Tables 1–3). The questionnaire was designed and revised by the pedagogical experts and has been used for many years in our university, and its validity and reliability have been well verified. In the 2017-2020 academic years, approximately 55% (544/986) of the students participated in the questionnaires (Table 1), and in the 2021-2022 academic year, approximately 86% (537/625) of the students participated in the questionnaires (Table 3) because the academic affairs office simplified the questionnaire procedure.

Table 1. The results of the official questionnaires to the course during 2017–2020^a.

Academic year	2017-2018	2018-2019	2018-2019	2019-2020	2019-2020
Term (NC)	F (2)	F (2)	S (2)	F (4)	S (2)
NS (NP)	185 (124)	179 (119)	149 (75)	315 (131)	158 (95)
Resource richness	4.69 ± 0.54	4.89 ± 0.30	4.92 ± 0.27	4.91 ± 0.31	4.92 ± 0.26
Teaching quality	4.63 ± 0.64	4.91 ± 0.31	4.91 ± 0.29	4.94 ± 0.27	4.93 ± 0.30
Course value	4.62 ± 0.68	4.86 ± 0.37	4.92 ± 0.27	4.91 ± 0.31	4.93 ± 0.30
Satisfaction level	4.67 ± 0.58	4.89 ± 0.30	4.93 ± 0.25	4.90 ± 0.29	4.93 ± 0.30
Ranking^b	20%∼50%	Top 20%	Top 20%	Top 20%	Top 20%

^a Students were asked to evaluate their impressions to the course on a five point Likert-type scale ranging. The results are expressed as average ± standard deviation. NC: number of classes; NS: number of students enrolled in the course; NP: number of participants with valid replies. F: the fall and winter term; S: the spring and summer term.

^b The ranking among all of the university courses.

Table 2. The overall evaluation (satisfaction level) to the course in the 2020-2022 academic years.

Term-Year	Average score (satisfaction) of the course (approximately 60 students participated in the survey each class)				Average scores of all
					Biological courses	general courses	(total) courses
	Class 1	Class 2	Class 3	Class 4
F21-22	4.63	4.67	4.65	4.73	4.43	4.47	4.46
S21-22	4.69	4.66	4.67	4.62	4.54	4.52	4.52
F20-21	4.62	4.66	4.67	4.69	4.43	4.48	4.47
S20-21	4.59	4.69	4.56	4.56	4.49	4.47	4.47
P-value*	–	–	–	–	3.51 × 10^−8	4.97 × 10^−10	4.24 × 10^−10

*Significant analysis of t-test (paired data, one tail) between ILE course and biological courses (general courses, all courses). F: the fall and winter term; S: the spring and summer term.

Table 3. The recommendation index of the course*.

Year-Term	No. of enrolled students	No. (%) of survey participants	No. (%) of ‘highly recommended’	Recomm- endation index	No. of comments	No. (%) of ‘interesting’ comments
2021-F1	80	75 (94%)	49 (65%)	4.54	53	30 (57%)
2021-F2	81	72 (89%)	44 (61%)	4.53	53	33 (62%)
2021-F3	72	66 (92%)	50 (76%)	4.67	31	15 (48%)
2021-F4	67	63 (94%)	40 (64%)	4.45	23	9 (39%)
2022-S1	84	62 (74%)	47 (76%)	4.70	40	19 (48%)
2022-S2	82	51 (62%)	29 (56%)	4.48	26	12 (46%)
2022-S3	81	74 (91%)	47 (63%)	4.55	28	12 (43%)
2022-S4	78	74 (95%)	51 (69%)	5.61	28	10 (36%)
Mean ± SD	78 ± 6	67 ± 8 (86% ±12%)	45 ± 7 (65% ± 6%)	4.69 ± 0.38	35 ± 12	18 ± 9 (47% ± 9%)

* F: the fall and winter term; S: the spring and summer term.

The classroom questionnaires were conducted by the course teachers in the 2021-2022 academic year, which were carried out offline in the fall semester and online in the winter, spring and summer semesters (https://www.course.zju.edu.cn/course/30458). On the questionnaire, students’ knowledge gains in 11 divisions of life education and their ability improvements in critical thinking and integrative thinking were investigated (Table 4). The questionnaire was designed on the basis of referring to the reports of Rowe et al. (2015) and Wu & Wu (2022), and was revised by academic experts in our university. There were 71, 67, 67 and 53 students participated in the questionnaires, respectively, in the above four semesters (Table 4).

Table 4. Student’s self-reported knowledge gain after the course*.

Semester (2021-2022 academic year)	Fall	Winter	Spring	Summer
Number of students enrolled in ILE	161	139	166	159
Number of survey participants	71	67	69	53
G1: The gain in life origin	3.56 ± 0.69	3.85 ± 0.82	3.97 ± 0.78	3.65 ± 0.82
G2: The gain in life evolution	3.43 ± 0.71	3.76 ± 0.89	3.98 ± 0.82	3.66 ± 0.93
G3: The gain in life diversity	3.39 ± 0.74	3.87 ± 0.90	3.88 ± 0.83	3.60 ± 0.94
G4: The gain in life uniqueness	3.49 ± 0.82	4.00 ± 0.78	3.98 ± 0.90	3.66 ± 0.86
G5: The gain in life holiness	3.50 ± 0.83	4.03 ± 0.78	4.13 ± 0.86	3.69 ± 0.96
G6: The gain in life vulnerability	3.53 ± 0.81	4.11 ± 0.77	4.23 ± 0.73	3.77 ± 0.93
G7: The gain in life tenacity	3.63 ± 0.80	4.22 ± 0.74	4.16 ± 0.79	3.79 ± 0.94
G8: The gain in life solicitude	3.79 ± 0.76	4.09 ± 0.77	4.13 ± 0.78	3.79 ± 0.91
G9: The gain in life harmony	3.73 ± 0.74	4.03 ± 0.89	3.98 ± 0.89	3.75 ± 0.83
G10: The gain in life responsibility	3.79 ± 0.80	4.09 ± 0.80	4.00 ± 0.83	3.70 ± 0.88
G11: The gain in life value	3.64 ± 0.83	3.95 ± 0.89	4.03 ± 0.85	3.74 ± 0.90
G12: Improvement in critical thinking	–	–	3.38 ± 0.57	3.52 ± 0.61
G13: Improvement in integrative thinking	–	–	3.47 ± 0.60	3.64 ± 0.59

* Students were asked to evaluate their knowledge gains (G₁ to G₁₁) or ability improvement (G₁₂ and G₁₃) after the course. There were 5 response options: no improvement (1 point), little improvement (2 points), significant improvement (3 points), quite significant improvement (4 points) and extra significant improvement (5 points). The results are expressed as mean ± standard deviation.

Evaluating students’ interest and satisfaction with the course

Subjective evaluation

On the offline classroom questionnaire conducted in the fall semester of the 2021-2022 academic year, one of the items asked students to rank four subjects in order of interest from 9 candidates. The subjects ranked first to fourth were scored 5 to 2 points sequentially, and each of the other subjects was scored 1 point. The average score of each subject was defined as an interest index of the subject.

On the official questionnaires, students were asked to rate their overall satisfaction with the course, and their satisfaction with the resource richness, the teaching quality and the course value (Table 1). The response adopted a five-point Likert-type scale ranging (Kowalski et al., 2021) from 1 = ‘not satisfied’ to 5 = ‘highly satisfied’. From the 2020–2021 academic year on, the university academic affairs office adopted a satisfaction-priority evaluation system (Table 2). Only the students who rated the overall satisfaction of a course more than 4.5 or less than 4.0 were required to take part in a survey, in which his or her recommendation level on the course was given, and his or her reason for high or low rating was explained. Response options for recommendation level ranged from 1 = ‘not recommend’ to 5 = ‘highly recommend’. On the basis of the questionnaires, the recommendation index (an average recommendation level score) and satisfaction index (an average satisfaction level score) were calculated. Among the reasons for high ratings, those who commented that the course was ‘interesting’ were counted (Table 3).

Objective evaluation

Students’ interest level (or satisfaction level) was objectively assessed based on the popularity of the course, which could be reflected in the increase in the number of students enrolled each year.

Evaluating students’ basic disciplinary understanding

Subjective evaluation

On the classroom questionnaire, students were asked to provide their self-perceptions of the improvement in basic disciplinary knowledge (Table 4). The response adopted a five-point Likert-type scale ranging (Kowalski et al., 2021) from 1 = ‘no improvement’ to 5 = ‘extra significant improvement’.

Objective evaluation

Students’ basic disciplinary understanding was evaluated objectively with the aid of unit quiz banks on the MOOC (https://www.icourse163.org/course/ZJU-1206447846). The unit quizzes could be performed for three times, testing basic disciplinary knowledge and low-level thinking, such as remembering and understanding. Students were asked to take the first test before class, and their disciplinary progress was evaluated by comparing the scores with those after class. Each quiz was time limited, containing 10 judgement questions (1 point each) and 5 multiple-choice questions (2 points each), which were randomly allocated by the MOOC system from the corresponding unit quiz bank. The data were collected in the summer semester of 2022, and at least 31 students (no more than 56 students) completed the pretest in each of the 8 unit quizzes.

Evaluating students’ critical thinking and integrative thinking abilities

Subjective evaluation

On the classroom questionnaire, students were asked to rate their self-perceptions of ability improvement in critical thinking and integrative thinking (Table 4, G12 and G₁₃). The response options ranged from 1 = ‘no improvement’ to 5 = ‘extra significant improvement’.

Objective evaluation

In the classes, students were asked to give their opinions on a series of social-biological issues. After full discussion, the number of students who changed their minds was counted, and the improvement in critical thinking and integrative thinking abilities was estimated. In addition, at the end of each semester, a final exam was carried out, in which high order skills such as application, interdisciplinary analysis and integrated evaluation were tested, and the scores were compared with those of volunteers who participated in the pretest. The data of the final exam were collected in the summer semester of 2022, when 143 students took the examination (n = 143). The data of the pretest were collected at the beginning of the fall semester, 2022, when 32 volunteers who registered for the course took the examination (using the same test paper).

Statistical analyses

Participation in all questionnaires was strictly voluntary and anonymous. The questionnaire values were subjected to statistical analyses, and the final results are presented as the means ± standard deviations. Student’s t test (Microsoft Excel 2013) was performed for paired groups or two independent groups on a hypothesis that the mean value of each group was equal, and the significance level of 0.05 was used to judge whether the hypothesis was accepted or rejected. Before performing the analysis it was verified that the data in each group were normally distributed and the variance was homogenous. The reliability and reproducibility of the questionnaires were evaluated by the consistency (correlation) of the results in different semesters, and the reliability of the internal consistency of the questionnaire was evaluated with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients: α= [K/(K-1)][1- (ΣS_i²)/S_x²], in which K represents the number of questions, S_i² represents the variance of scores for each question, and S_x² represents the variance of total scores (Wu & Wu, 2022).

Results

Construction of the ILE course

‘Introduction of Biological Sciences’ has been widely offered as a general course in colleges, which emphasizes basic theories and knowledge in biology. We established an ILE course based on the reorganization of ‘Introduction of Biological Sciences’, integrating with relevant social-biological issues. We selected cases that are conducive to students’ moral growth and added interdisciplinary knowledge about life health, food safety and environmental protection. The main objective of the course is to cultivate students’ life consciousness. Life consciousness here refers to an individual’s cognition of various knowledge of life philosophy and life sciences, including knowledge about life attributes such as physiological life, social life and spiritual life, as well as knowledge about life characteristics such as life diversity, life uniqueness, life responsibility and life value. The cultivation of life consciousness will help students cherish and respect lives and facilitate reasonable decision-making when they face life dilemmas. The course contains eight chapters, its theoretical framework is shown in Figure 1, and its major contents are shown in Table S3.

Figure 1. The theoretical framework of the ILE course. The course contents are shown in the circle, and the teaching objectives are shown outside of the circle.

The first chapter (life and life education) introduces the attributes of life and the development of life education. The human life has three attributes: physiological attribute, social attribute and spiritual attribute. Based on telomere theory, which achieved the Nobel Prize in 2009, a cell will die when a telomere is too short to maintain chromosome stability (Wu, 2020). When 70% of the cells die, organ failure will occur, and physiological life will end. Since the physiological life cannot be indefinitely extended, it is best for a person to expand his social and spiritual activities as widely as possible within the limited lifespan.

The uniqueness of life introduces the origin, evolution, diversity and holiness of life. The formation of living organisms is holy and full of contingency. Although billions and billions of planets have been discovered in the universe, the earth is the only one thus far that has been found to have life. Although the earth is in the habitable zone of the cosmos and contains liquid water, it still takes approximately one billion years to form an initial cell through chemical aggregation (Wu, 2020). Because of the randomness of mutation, evolution has no direction. Any change adapted to the environment can be preserved and inherited, thereby constituting the existing diverse living world. However, each individual is unique not only in morphology and physiology but also in biochemistry and genomics (Madigan et al., 2019). As a person, the uniqueness is also reflected in his knowledge structure and his way of thinking. Since other lives are unique, we should respect them. Since our own life is unique, we should believe in ourselves and strive to shape our unique personality.

The vulnerability of life introduces the effect of physical, chemical and biological factors on living organisms, especially humans. Physical and chemical disasters have led to five mass extinctions during the development of the earth, and the sixth mass extinction is said to be approaching due to the destruction of the ecosystem (Rounsevell et al., 2020; Schulz et al., 2021). Throughout the history of human development, bacterial and viral infections have resulted in countless deaths, while many infectious diseases, such as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19), are still widespread worldwide. Therefore, In the face of complex and ever-changing living environments, one should take care of one’s health and avoid any physical, chemical, or biological threats.

The tenacity of life introduces the classical cases of living organisms adapting to harsh environments through evolution. Bacilli and Tardigrades can accommodate extreme climate by formation of dormant bodies, amphibians and reptiles can overcome cold by hibernation, and birds and mammals can deal with hunger and thirst by migration (Wu, 2020). In the face of an invasion of pathogenic microorganisms, prokaryotes develop a series of restriction endonucleases and a clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats and associated genes (CRISPR-Cas) system, and vertebrates evolve RNA interference and immune systems to inhibit the replication or expression of invasive genes (Madigan et al., 2019). As a scientifically literate citizen, one should draw inspiration from these life phenomena and find ways to overcome difficulties. ‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger.’

The care of life introduces prevention strategies for infectious diseases, psychological illnesses, food poisoning and accidents. In the epidemic season of infectious diseases, protective measures must be taken (Elsayed et al., 2023). In daily routines, good habits related to hygienic drinking and eating should be cultivated, physical and mental health should be considered, all kinds of narcotic drugs should be kept away, and traffic rules and tourism regulations should be complied with.

The harmony of life introduces the relationship between various organisms and the relationship between organisms and their survival environments. Living organisms in nature cooperate with one another through mutualism, symbiosis or coexistence, thus constituting a material cycle and energy flow, maintaining the stability of ecosystem and resulting in a harmonious world (Vesterinen, 2024). As a scientifically literate citizen, one should develop an ability of cooperation and a sense of sustainable development to maintain social and natural harmony.

The responsibility of life introduces the basic responsibilities of living organisms. For animals in nature, propagation is their primary responsibility. Many cold-blooded animals will soon be dead after they finish this task without even seeing the hatching of their babies. For warm-blooded animals, because the development of fertilized eggs requires a more stable environment and hatched babies need a long time for caring, it is necessary for parents to cooperate closely to nourish their children. Thus, these animals should undertake the responsibility of being loyal to their family and the responsibility of protecting their territory (Wu, 2020). As initiators of environmental destruction, human beings have also the responsibility of restoring the polluted environment.

The value of life introduces the contributions of living organisms in nature to their populations, communities and ecosystems. Animals and plants supply food, clothing and shelter for human beings, and together with microorganisms, they promote element cycles and energy flow in nature, thus maintaining the sustainable development of human society (Pascual et al., 2017; Rounsevell et al., 2020). In the face of adverse circumstances, some Bacilli decompose themselves by autolysis for the formation of endospores in community (Madigan et al., 2019). Facing an attack from natural enemies, many animals give visual, auditory or olfactory alarms to their peers (Wu, 2020). As a scientifically literate citizen, one should keep in mind the benefits of other living organisms, and do his best to maintain biodiversity. At the same time, one should also make contributions to his peers, his society, his nation and even the whole world.

Students’ interest level and satisfaction level with the course

Students were interested in the SSI-integrated ILE course. The classroom questionnaire showed that the subjects related to health, food and environment were the favourites of 23.9%, 17.1%, and 9.4% of the students (Figure 2A). Statistical analyses showed that the interest indices of the three subjects were 2.64, 2.56 and 1.71, respectively (Figure 2B). From the results, it can be found that students’ interests were well consistent with the teaching contents of the ILE course (Table S3). The official questionnaires showed that students were satisfied with the course. In the four terms of 2018–2020 academic years, the average satisfaction levels reached 4.89, 4.93, 4.90 and 4.93, respectively, much higher than the average score of biological courses (4.553, n > 150) or general courses (4.574, n > 800). Based on the questionnaires, the course was ranked in the top 20% among all university courses (Table 1). From the 2020–2021 academic year on, the university academic affairs office adopted a new evaluation system, in which a reason must be given if the course was rated more than 4.5 or less than 4.0. From the results of the new evaluation, it can be seen that the average satisfaction level of the ILE course was 4.65 ± 0.003, which was significantly higher than that of biological courses or general courses (Table 2). The results of the official questionnaires also showed that the course was highly recommended by 65% of the students, and a recommendation index reached 4.69 ± 0.38 (Table 3). An analysis of the reasons for high ratings showed that 47% of the students considered the course ‘interesting’ (Table 3). The results of the agreement survey (Table S4) showed that 90% of the students strongly agreed or quite agreed with the teaching mode of the ILE course, and they appreciated the use of biological knowledge for life education. Approximately 75% of the students strongly supported and 20% quite supported carrying out life education in colleges, which is consistent with the statistics of an online discussion, in which all 836 students participated in the discussion thought life education should be popularized in colleges.

Figure 2. The favourite subjects of students (A) and the interest index of each subject (B). The percentage of students is displayed in the pie chart, and the favourite subjects are shown outside the pie chart in capital letters. F: food and beverage; H: health and safe; L: loving and affection; C: career planning and occupation; B: beauty and fashion; T: travelling and scenery; E: environment and ecology; W: war and peace; O: others.

The official questionnaire was designed by pedagogical experts and has been used for many years in our university, and its validity was guaranteed. Although the academic affairs office did not announce the detailed results of the questionnaire, resulting in the evaluating reliability could not be quantified. From the consistence of the results of ILE course in various semesters (the course was often rated in the top 20%; Tables 1 and 3) and the significant difference of the results between ILE course and the other courses (P < 0.001; Table 2), it could be inferred that the survey was reliable.

Due to the good reputation of the course, the number of classes and the number of enrolled students increased from 2 and 185 in the 2017-2018 academic year to 8 and 625 in the 2021–2022 academic year, respectively (Table 1 and Table S2). Below are two examples of students’ comments posted on the official questionnaire.

The course is interesting and full of positive energy. I think it will be helpful in developing our values and improving our life consciousness.

All cases in the course are living facts that happen in nature and therefore can strike our hearts directly. These natural phenomena will provide a reference for us to take reasonable actions in the face of life difficulties.

Students’ knowledge improvement

Understanding life knowledge is a prerequisite for making reasonable decisions in the face of life dilemmas. The results of the classroom questionnaire showed that students’ self-perceived knowledge gains in 11 branches ranged from 3.43 to 4.23 (Table 4), suggesting that their life knowledge significantly improved after the course.

Statistical analyses showed that the correlation coefficients between the gains of the fall semester and those in the winter, spring and summer semesters were 0.7657, 0.8003 and 0.8561, respectively, indicating that the survey was reliable and reproducible. Cronbach’s alpha values reached 0.8377, 0.9467, 0.9154 and 0.9138, respectively, in the above four semesters, much higher than the satisfactory reliability level of 0.76 (Dessie et al., 2024), indicating that the internal reliability of the questionnaire was high and that the survey was credible.

To objectively assess students’ knowledge acquisition, we took advantage of the unit quizzes on the MOOC and observed students’ academic progress by comparing their quiz scores before and after class. The results are shown in Figure 3A. The t tests of paired samples (two tail) showed that the P values of the eight units were 1.4 × 10⁻¹², 1.6 × 10⁻¹⁷, 9.2 × 10⁻¹⁰, 5.9 × 10⁻¹⁸, 2.9 × 10⁻¹⁷, 1.9 × 10⁻⁹, 2.0 × 10⁻⁷, 5.4 × 10⁻⁹, respectively, indicating that the students’ knowledge was significantly improved after the class. However, only approximately 30% of the students completed the unit quizzes before class, making the results insufficiently representative.

Figure 3. The comparisons of pre- and post class scores in the unit quizzes (A, total 20 points) and in the final examination (B, total 100 points). The data were collected in the summer semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. **P < 0.001.

The unit quizzes tested only low levels of thinking, such as memory and comprehension; therefore, the students’ average score after class reached 4.67. To accurately evaluate students’ knowledge gains, high-order thinking was tested in the final examination. The results are shown in Figure 3B. It can be seen that students’ average score increased from 42.3 ± 9.8 before class to 71.7 ± 10.1 (total 100 points). The two tail, equal variances t test (the variances of the two samples were 96.36 and 101.26, respectively, and the P value of the F test was 0.93) showed that the P value was less than 0.001, indicating that students’ life knowledge and high-order thinking significantly improved after the class.

Students’ critical thinking abilities

Subjective evaluation on the classroom questionnaires showed that students’ self-reported improvement in critical thinking was 3.45 on average (Table 4), indicating that their critical thinking abilities were improved quite significantly after the course.

To objectively evaluate students’ critical thinking skills, we employed a problem-oriented teaching strategy, asking students to express their opinions on a series of social-biological issues. For example, during the lecture on tenacity of life, we started with a short video titled ‘Rebirth of the Eagle’, which showed how an eagle painfully removed its old beak, claws and feathers at the age of 40 so that it could survive for another 30 years (https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Na411e7aE/). Then, we asked students to discuss the reasonableness of the plots by using their critical thinking. It was found that approximately 80% of students thought the video was reasonable at first glance; however, after full discussion, all of the students believed that the plots were irrational. Here are some of the students’ comments.

As far as I know, a wild eagle can only live for 20 years, and a captive-bred eagle can live for 40 years. No eagle can live to be 70 years old.

A sharp beak and dexterous paws are necessary for the survival of a wild eagle, and therefore it is unlikely that its beak and paws grow as long as need to be reshaped.

Most birds change their feathers gradually. I do not believe the eagle will pluck out all of its old feathers before moulting.

I doubt that an eagle can survive for months without eating and drinking during its moulting. I know that a person can only survive 72 hours without food and water.

For another example, in a lecture on genetically modified crops, we presented two pictures showing the growth status of a conventional crop and a Bt-modified crop (Figure S1), and asked students to think about whether the Bt-modified crops could improve yields. At first glance, approximately 90% of the students believed that Bt-modified crops could improve yields. However, after discussions on the function of Bt and the importance of control experiments, all of the students agreed that Bt-modified crops could not increase yields. The following are two examples of the students’ comments on the MOOC.

It is important to design a reasonable control test. If Bt-modified crops are planted in areas without lepidopteran insects or if a large amount of chemical pesticide is applied in the fields, will the yields of Bt-modified crops still be higher than those of conventional crops?

I think the yield of a Bt-modified crop might slightly decrease if it is planted in an insect-free field because part of the materials and energy produced from photosynthesis will be used to synthesize the Bt protein.

Students’ interdisciplinary analysing abilities

Subjective evaluation on the classroom questionnaires showed that students’ self-reported improvement in integrated thinking was 3.56 on average (Table 4), indicating that their interdisciplinary understanding abilities had been quite significantly improved after the course.

To objectively evaluate students’ interdisciplinary thinking abilities, we used a problem-oriented teaching strategy, asking students to propose possible solutions to social-biological issues. For example, on a question of when human life begins, almost all of the students believed that human life begins with the formation of a zygote. However, when we extrapolated this argument from a sociological perspective to mean that abortion is a destruction of life, approximately 85% of the students changed their ideas. After an introduction of the law of biogenesis, which states that the embryonic development of an organism is a simple and rapid repetition of the evolutionary history of the species, the students exhibited their interdisciplinary thinking abilities, believing that it was acceptable to abort an embryo before it developed into a humanoid. Of 181 responses to the discussion on the MOOC in the 2021-2022 academic year, 87% of the students considered the issue from an interdisciplinary perspective, not only from the perspective of mothers and foetuses, but also from the perspective of physiology, economics, society, family, health and even women’s rights. The following are a few typical opinions from the discussion.

From a physiological point of view, abortion is a deprivation of life, but from a sociological point of view, it does not mean harm to humanity. The foetus is only a part of the mother’s body and has no connection with society, and therefore, the mother has the right to decide whether to give birth or not.

A foetus can be considered a biological life, but not a person in the legal sense. A severely defective foetus will not only affect its development, but also drag down the entire family. Therefore, I am pro-choice.

From a medical point of view, an embryo is an entity with its own genome and vital signatures. However, there is a lot of legal debate about whether it is a life, and the regulations on abortion vary from country to country.

Whether the embryo is an independent life or just a part of a mother needs to be comprehensively evaluated by combining the knowledge of biology, philosophy, ethics, religion and law.

Another example concerns the safety of Bt-modified crops. Before the lecture, approximately 80% of the students (58/73, classroom investigation) believed Bt-modified foods were safe for human beings. After the lecture, 72% of the students (84/118, statistics from the discussion on the MOOC) were able to consider the issue from an interdisciplinary perspective, considering not only the safety of proteins the transgenic crop expressed but also the safety of genetically modified crops to surrounding insects and birds and even to the entire ecosystem. Here are some of the students’ comments on the MOOC.

Although much evidence has shown that genetically modified foods are safe, long-term toxicity tests are lacking. I think it had better to take time to verify its security.

In my opinion, genetically modified foods are safe in general, but the exogenous gene products may pose potential risks to human health and environments. For example, the Bt protein may cause allergic reactions in a particular population and may induce drug tolerance in lepidopteran insects. In addition, the Bt gene may also be transferred to natural plants, causing adverse effects on the ecological environment. Therefore, the safety of genetically modified food needs to be further studied and evaluated.

Discussion

Life education was first proposed and implemented by American scholar J. Donald Walters in 1968 and has subsequently been practised in many countries worldwide (Wu, 2020). Traditionally, life education has focused on the fields of life philosophy and social culture. We established an ILE course on the basis of the rearrangement of an introduction course for biological sciences. As far as we know, it is the first life education course with scientific knowledge as the teaching carrier.

The course aims to explore a new way of cultivating students’ life consciousness through the introduction of various life phenomena. The course does not tell students how to do or what should be done but rather tells students about classical cases that frequently occur in nature and scientific discoveries that have been confirmed in laboratories, many of which have been awarded the Nobel Prize (Table S5). We hope that students can be inspired by the natural phenomena and then summarize the laws of nature and further explore the meaning of life. With the increase in students’ life experiences, their thinking will tend to be mature, and their views on the world and life will tend to be reasonable.

The course improves students’ motivation to learn sciences. The classroom questionnaire showed that 23.9%, 17.1% and 9.4% of the students reported their favourite subjects to be health, food and environment, respectively (Figure 2), which are well in line with the teaching contents of the SSI-integrated course (Table S3). This result corresponds well with Zambrano et al.'s (2020) report that highlighting the prosocial affordances of science can stimulate students’ scientific interests and is also in accordance with the finding of Brownell & Kloser (2015), who elucidated that the learning experiences associated with daily lives significantly increased students’ excitement and engagement. Recently, the vision of science, environment and health has received growing interest among science educators, and a related interest group was founded in the European Science Education Research Association (Zeyer, 2022). It was found that education-integrated health and the environment with science were helpful in promoting students’ scientific literacy (Chen, 2023; Zeyer, 2022). We established the ILE course by integrating social issues into health, environmental and life sciences, and such an integration further increased students’ interests. The results in this study showed that the recommendation index and satisfaction index of the course were 4.69 and 4.65, respectively (Tables 2 and 3). Of the students’ comments to the course, 47% reported the course as ‘interesting’ (Table 3). From the increase in the number of students enrolled in the course, it can also be objectively deduced that the course was popular among students (Table S2). All of these findings suggested that the teaching mode of the course was acknowledged by the students, agreeing well with the results of the classroom questionnaires (Table S4).

The course improves students’ life consciousness. One of the main objectives of college education is to cultivate students to be scientifically literate citizens so that students are provided with the necessary knowledge to make informed decisions (Auerbach & Schussler, 2017). From the results of the classroom questionnaire, it can be seen that students’ self-perceived knowledge gains in 11 branches ranged from 3.43 to 4.23 (Table 4), which suggested that students’ knowledge in life solicitude, life uniqueness, life holiness, life harmony, life responsibility and life value significantly improved after the course. The objective assessments confirmed the statement. The comparison of pre-class and post class tests showed that students’ scores in the 8 unit quizzes (Figure 3A) and the final examination (Figure 3B) significantly increased after class. Physical and mental health is the basis of personal development, and competitiveness and creativity are prerequisites of personal success (Chen, 2023). The improvement of knowledge on life solicitude, life uniqueness, and life holiness is conducive to the formation of good living habits and the formation of unique personality, which further inspires students’ imagination and creativity. Harmony and stability are the foundation of social development (Noremy et al., 2022) and a comfortable environment is the basis of human survival (Rounsevell et al., 2020). The acquisition of knowledge on life harmony, life responsibility and life value is conducive to cultivating students’ environmental awareness, which further promotes the sustainable development of nature and society.

The course develops students’ critical thinking and integrative thinking. The classroom questionnaire showed that students’ self-perceived improvement in critical thinking and integrative thinking abilities were 3.45 and 3.56, respectively, which suggested that the two abilities were significantly improved after the course (Table 4 G₁₂ and G₁₃). The objective evaluation showed that after the class, students’ opinions on social-biological issues such as ‘Rebirth of the Eagle’ and ‘the yield of Bt-modified crops’ were more reasonable, and their views on ‘the legality of abortion’ and ‘the safety of genetically modified crops’ were more comprehensive, which suggested that students’ critical thinking and interdisciplinary thinking abilities were improved. Comparison of the pre- and post tests showed that students’ scores in the final examination, which tested high-order thinking abilities, were also significantly increased (Figure 3B) after class. Critical thinking and integrative thinking are the core learning objectives of science education (Dowd et al., 2018). A scientifically literate citizen should acquire the two thinking skills so that scientific facts can be discerned from pseudosciences. It has been suggested that the engagement of SSI in science education is a promising way to promote thinking skills (Kowalski et al., 2021). SSIs are complex social problems with technological or conceptual ties to sciences, many of which are rooted in biological cases (Hewitt et al., 2019). SSI-based instruction requires students to consider not only the science dimension but also the social ramifications of the issues and therefore can promote students’ proficiency in disciplinary knowledge, reasoning skills, and interdisciplinary analysis abilities.

Conclusions and limitations

In this study, a novel ILE course was established by integrating social issues into life sciences, and it was found that the SSI-integrated course improves students’ motivation to learn science and helps to develop students’ life consciences and critical thinking. However, as a novel interdisciplinary course, its teaching contents and teaching mode need to be further perfected. In the study, no statistical analysis was conducted between the ILE course and the other introductory biological courses because the detailed data of the official questionnaires on the other courses were not publicly available. In spite of the limitations, the ILE course is helpful in guiding students to make reasonable decisions in the face of adversity and pressure, and is worth popularizing in universities and colleges.

Ethics statement

The study met the ethics/human subject requirements of Zhejiang University, China at the time the data were collected.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the academic affairs office of Zhejiang University for supplying the questionnaire data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partly funded by Department of Education, Zhejiang Province, China [grant number ZJU2022015].

Notes on contributors

Genfu Wu

Genfu Wu is an associate professor at College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang University, PR China. He is mainly engaged in teaching and research in biological fields, especially in Microbiology.

Kejie Wu

Kejie Wu was graduated from Education Department of Beijing Normal University, and now is a doctoral student in Fudan University, PR China. His research focuses on the education and examination system of modern China.