This gateway biology course provides a strong foundation in the principles of biology for students majoring in a natural science, or the medical and healthcare fields. It is the first of a two-course sequence. Primary topics include biochemistry, cell structure and function, genetics, heredity, evolution, and modern applications of biology.

This course was developed by Lumen Learning, with contributing work from Shelli Carter. The course is based on the OpenStax textbook Biology, supplemented with relevant materials from Khan Academy and videos from multiple sources. Original practice activities were authored by Shelli Carter and Lumen Learning in the development of this course.

Course Improvements

We believe in making continuous improvements to our courses in order to enhance and facilitate student learning. This newest version of the course includes a vast number of data-driven improvements to assessment questions and text content in order to better illustrate, clarify, and evaluate concepts.

Contributors

This course was developed by the Lumen Learning team with contributions from:

Primary Content Authors
Shelli Carter, Contributor

Acknowledgements
This book has benefited from the contributions of many people, including Sidra Ayyaz, Audrey Braun, Kirsten Grant, Justine Ho, Karl Jarvis, Baiyina Jones, Gazar Khalid, Sriee Kumaran AC, Ashley Maloney, Faith Mauk, Liz McGinty, Sri Harshitha Mutyala, Mathilde Perrier, Sebastian Ruiz, Brian Schwartz, Elena Bray Speth, Mengistu Ayele, and Joy Ulysse.

About Lumen

Lumen Learning courseware is based on open educational resources (OER). When we can find well designed, effective OER that are appropriately licensed, we use them in our courseware. When we can’t find pre-existing OER, we create original content and license it as OER (under a Creative Commons Attribution license).

Lumen’s authoring process doesn’t end when our courseware is released. Our choice to adopt open educational resources means that we have the copyright permissions necessary to engage in continuous improvement of our learning content. Consequently, our courses are continually being revised and updated. Errata reported for our courseware are fixed in a matter of days, as opposed to the traditional model in which errors persist until the next “edition” is printed (often a year or more). Students and faculty can suggest improvements to our courses directly from within the courseware as they use it. And we conduct regular analyses to determine where students are struggling the most in our courseware, and make improvements that specifically target these areas.

Given our unique approach, our list of authors and other contributors may look different than the lists you are used to seeing. We provide both a list of the primary content authors (the people involved in the initial creation of the course) and a list of everyone who has contributed suggestions and other improvements to the course since it was first released. We invite you to join us as we create courseware that supports student learning more effectively each semester.

If you’d like to connect with us to learn more about adopting this course, please Contact Us.

You can also make an appointment for OER Office Hours to connect virtually with a live Lumen expert about any question you may have.