More about the BioQUEST Library

Participants at a BEDROCK workshop in Bar Harbor, Maine

The curricular materials in The BioQUEST Library represent a long term community of developers and undergraduate science educators who support an active, “learning by doing” approach to teaching and learning biology. These resources reflect an educational philosophy known as BioQUEST's 3Ps:

Problem posing
Problem solving
Peer persuasion

We recommend that students use these modules to develop a research question, pursue solutions to their problem, and define the criteria for closure and publication, just as scientists do.

The BioQUEST Library modules are intended to be:

flexible so that investigations can range from simple to sophisticated and demanding.
robust so that students may pursue multiple hypotheses and may be able to generate and analyze large datasets.
open-ended so that students take responsibility for evaluating the completeness of their problem-solving endeavors and the validity and utility of their solutions.
challenging so that students require preparation and background knowledge as in actual laboratory investigations.

While there are software manuals included for most modules, support for the The BioQUEST Library modules does not emphasize tutorials. Instead, students make use of features as they perceive the need to do so.