An Experience Teaching an Undergraduate Level Course in Biophysics - adapted structure, challenges, and retention factors

Oct 15, 2026

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Developing interdisciplinary biology-focused courses requires integrating mathematical, physical, and information-science concepts through concrete examples and effective teaching techniques. This paper presents the experience of introducing an undergraduate biophysics course, designed to study cellular biophysics with emphasis on mitosis, biofilaments, and proteins. It outlines the adapted course structure, instructional challenges, supporting factors, and evaluation approach to improve student retention of quantitative and conceptual material.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages5

Reading Time13 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Interdisciplinary course motivation and context

Course development at Canisius College

Course Description

Textbook and lecture structure

Lecture outline topics

An Experience Teaching an Undergraduate Level Course in Biophysics Mitra Shojania Feizabadi Physics Department, Seton Hall University,South Orange, NJ Email: [shojanmi@shu.edu](shojanmi@shu.edu) Abstract: The importance of including concepts, examples, and techniques from mathematics and the physical and information sciences in biology courses to fulfill the need of today‘s undergraduates has been the principle motivation for developing interdisciplinary biology-focused courses. Although this movement started many years ago, developing and offering courses like biophysics is still new in many liberal arts colleges. Taking advantage of the experiences gained by introducing an interdisciplinary course, simply titled Biophysics, this paper was developed to present the adapted structure, challenges, and useful factors to further develop such a course in order to heighten students‘ retention of the material. Introduction Traditional undergraduate science courses provide backgrounds in mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, or computer science, often without demonstrating how these fields overlap. In contrast, interdisciplinary courses select and develop materials that promote student understanding of how different sciences and technologies integrate with one another. The importance of including concepts, examples, and techniques from mathematics and the physical and information sciences in biology courses in order to serve today‘s undergraduate biology students has received much attention recently (National Research Council, 2003; Goldestein, Nelson, 2005; Varmus, 1999; Mielczarek, 2006). At present, developing interdisciplinary courses is strongly encouraged and a variety of teaching methods exist (KANE, 2002; Biophysical Society, 2009; Physics Department, Haverford College, 2009; Biology Department, Beloit College, 2009; Physics Department, Simon Fraser University, 2009) . A biophysics course (PHY303) was developed at Canisius College with the support of a grant received from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to establish an undergraduate interdisciplinary program. This course was developed by the physics department and approved by the departments of physics, biology and chemistry and taught in the fall of 2006. Two faculty members, one from the physics department and one from the biology department were scheduled to team-teach this course. However, the first round was taught by the author alone due to the sabbatical leave of the biology faculty member at the time that the course was offered. This paper describes the experience gained while teaching this interdisciplinary course in biophysics at a small liberal arts college. Course Description Textbook and Lectures Structure There is a variety of different books and web resources available covering a broad range of topics for this class (Boal, 2002; Berg, 1993; Kane, 2003; Howard, 2001; Nelson, 2003; Tuszynski, & Kurznski, 2003) . Since the course was designed to include a detailed quantitative and qualitative interactions to express the cellular mechanics, the three main books used were Jonathan Howard‘s Mechanics of Motor Proteins and the Cytoskeleton (Howard, 2001), Philip Nelson‘s Biological Physics: Energy, Information, Life (Nelson, 2003), and Jack Tuszynski‘s Introduction to Biophysics (Tuszynski, & Kurznski, 2003) . These books include all the topics covered in this course; however, the level of mathematical usage was significantly adjusted to meet the students‘ background. In order to address different teaching methods and provide more dynamic illustrations, lectures were presented via a combination of PowerPoint™ and chalkboard. Movies, animations and web links related to the topics introduced in the presentations were compiled to present the concepts of biophysics more effectively. The final evaluation of the students‘ performance was based on their grades in two written in-class examinations and their presentation of the assigned re

FAQs

What motivates creating interdisciplinary biophysics courses for undergraduates?

The paper emphasizes integrating mathematical, physical, and information-science concepts with examples and techniques so students can understand how disciplines overlap in biology.

How was the biophysics course originally developed and delivered?

The course (PHY303) was developed at Canisius College with grant support, approved by relevant departments, and team-teaching was planned; the first offering was taught by the author alone due to a sabbatical.

How does the course evaluate student learning?

Student performance is assessed using grades from two written in-class examinations and a presentation of an assigned research project.

Oct 15, 2026

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