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With roots 10 editions deep, the Eleventh Edition blends carefully reviewed content and an emphasis on experiments with a contemporary approach to active learning. Throughout, we focus on three driving themes:

Life is ENGAGING

We want students to come away from the introductory biology course with a sense of wonder and an ability to pursue biological questions. To that end, we keep the writing lively, the examples modern and exciting, and the emphasis on how we know what we know.

To help students engage with the course, an Investigating Life thread weaves through each chapter. Each individual part of the thread appeals to students, inspires them to ask questions, and keeps them wanting to know, “What next?” The beauty of the thread is that it gives students an authentic scientific experience beyond just reading about someone’s research results.

Life is ACTIVE

With the help of the Advisory Board, we’ve developed a series of pedagogical features that integrate tools for instructors with those for student independent study. Students work their way toward real understanding of biological principles. We don’t just ask them to memorize information—we invite them to actively participate in the process of discovery.

For instructors wanting to make active learning a part of their classroom, we’ve created an Active Learning Guide, with start-up material, ideas, and a complete guide to all the Life activities that are ready to add to your in-class repertoire.

Life is FOCUSED ON SKILLS

We want students to feel comfortable as they learn to manipulate and interpret data. The various types of problem-solving exercises in Life help them develop practical, analytical, and quantitative skills—skills that will benefit them whether they continue in biology or not. Exercises vary in skill level, type, and approach, with answers in the back of the book.

The response to our Work with the Data boxes has been so consistently positive that we now include at least one in every chapter. This feature asks students to analyze data from original scientific experiments, and includes questions in the text plus, now, a corresponding set of alternative exercises online in LaunchPad. We also provide an appendix, Making Sense of Data: A Statistics Primer, to help students prepare for the quantitative work they’ll be doing.

“What makes this book stand out most among the competition is the way in which there is a continued sense of reinforcement for novice learners.”

—Claudette Davis, George Mason University