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Introduction to Biology

15 instructional weeks + finals week (Week 1–Week 16) Free sample edition

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This is a complete course: fifteen instructional weeks and a finals week, every student component, built with The Course Maker and ready to import. Weeks are relative (Week 1 to Week 16); you set the dates when you import it. Browse the whole thing below. Click any piece to read it in full, then click back to return here.

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Free sample edition. No instructor, institution, or term identity appears anywhere in this edition, by design. The syllabus carries fill-in slots (instructor name, contact, office hours, institution policies) for the adopting instructor to make it their own. (Original objectives written from the standard Introduction to Biology body of knowledge; not copied from any school's course outline.)

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What the paid build adds

This sample is complete and yours to keep. A paid build is the same course made yours in the ways a download cannot be:

Every date set to your term and your breaks, and re-paced to a second campus calendar at no extra charge.
Your syllabus, your policies, and your outline of record in the build, with an alignment report that shows which component addresses each objective and SLO, and a Universal design for learning section drawn from the course's own data.
Your name on every page as the course's creator.
Kept current every term: fresh assessment variants, every link re-checked and the dead ones replaced, and the subject brought up to date where it has moved.
The full instructor pack: answer keys and worked solutions, the alignment report, and the UDL map.
A record for your college's file: the design attestation, a disclosure statement for every edition, and what changed at the end of each term.

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Included in every course

ChapterRequired
Required in every course. Every module presents the same content in three ways — a chapter to read, a slide deck with speaker notes, and captioned videos — so each student can choose how to take it in. The course is designed to reflect UDL's multiple means of representation, and the alignment report describes this to your curriculum committee.
Slide deck with speaker notesRequired
Required in every course. Every module presents the same content in three ways — a slide deck with speaker notes, a chapter to read, and captioned videos — so each student can choose how to take it in. The course is designed to reflect UDL's multiple means of representation, and the alignment report describes this to your curriculum committee.
Captioned video linksRequired
Required in every course. Every module presents the same content in three ways — captioned videos, a chapter to read, and a slide deck with speaker notes — so each student can choose how to take it in. The course is designed to reflect UDL's multiple means of representation, and the alignment report describes this to your curriculum committee. We link videos only when a caption track exists (from the creator or generated automatically), and we never host them.

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The syllabus

Policies, schedule, and grading

Read the full course syllabusPolicies, the week-by-week schedule, grading, and the bring-your-own-AI rules, with fill-in slots for the adopting instructor.→

Weighted gradebook

Assignment groups & weights

Configured in the export — the gradebook is set the moment the course is imported.

Assignment group	Weight	Notes
Tutorials & Practice	10%
Quizzes	10%
Workshops	20%
Assignments	25%
Discussions	15%
Exams	20%
Total	100%	Letter Standard

Objectives & outcomes

What students will be able to do

Objective 1

Describe the practice of science in biology — the characteristics of life as a set, the levels of biological organization, the scientific method and a controlled experiment's variables and control, and the difference between a hypothesis and a theory — and explain evolution by natural selection as the unifying framework of biology.

Objective 2

Explain the chemistry of life — atoms and the three kinds of chemical bonds, water's polarity and the properties it produces, and the logarithmic pH scale with buffers — and relate the structure of each of the four classes of biological macromolecules (carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, nucleic acids) to its function.

Objective 3

Compare prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, relate each eukaryotic organelle to its function, explain how substances cross the plasma membrane by passive and active transport (including osmosis and tonicity), and use the surface-area-to-volume ratio to explain why cells stay small.

Objective 4

Explain how cells obtain and transform energy — the laws of thermodynamics, ATP, and enzyme action with its temperature and pH limits — and trace cellular respiration and photosynthesis as ordered, located overviews, including fermentation and the relationship between the two processes.

Objective 5

Describe the eukaryotic cell cycle and the ordered phases of mitosis, compute a mitotic index, contrast mitosis with meiosis, and explain how crossing over, independent assortment, and fertilization generate genetic variation, including the 2ⁿ count.

Objective 6

Apply the principles of inheritance — segregation, independent assortment, the product rule, monohybrid, test, and dihybrid crosses, and the extensions of Mendel (incomplete dominance, codominance, multiple alleles, sex linkage, linkage, pedigrees) — to predict the outcomes of genetic crosses as probabilities.

Objective 7

Explain the structure and semiconservative replication of DNA, apply Chargaff's rules and complementary base pairing, and trace gene expression through transcription and translation with the genetic code (the central dogma), decoding a sequence from template to protein.

Objective 8

Describe how gene expression is regulated (the lac operon as the model), classify mutations and their effects, and explain what the core biotechnology tools do — PCR, gel electrophoresis, recombinant DNA, and CRISPR-Cas9 — including the ethical questions gene editing raises, weighed evenhandedly.

SLO A

Scientific reasoning — form a testable hypothesis, design and critique a controlled experiment, collect and organize data in a table, show every step of a quantitative calculation, and interpret biological data to evaluate claims about living systems.

SLO B

Structure, function, and process — connect a biological structure to its function, state a process as an ordered sequence with its cellular locations, and trace how matter and energy move through cells and across levels of biological organization.

How this course is built — read this first

Every teaching module carries the same set, in the order a student meets it: a Start Here overview, the chapter (the primary reading), the lecture (titled “Lecture: <module title>”), the slide deck with speaker notes, readings & resources (links only), the lecture tutorial and practice exercises worked with an AI tutor, the quiz, the discussion and the assignment, and the weekly Biology Lab & Inquiry. Exams: the midterm in Week 8 and the final in Week 16, a finals week with no module.

The discussion and the assignment each ship in both formats: the adaptive version is the published, graded item, and its traditional alternative (no AI) is a separate item that ships unpublished beside it. An instructor who prefers the traditional format publishes it and unpublishes or deletes the adaptive one.

What you see here is every student page. The instructor pack (answer keys and worked solutions, rubric calibration, image prompts, audio-brief scripts, and the alignment report) ships only in the download, never on this site.

Adaptive and traditional

Discussions & assignments: both formats in every module

Same learning objective either way; what changes is how the work happens.

Adaptive · published

Work it through with an approved chatbot

The student does the work in a guided conversation with an approved chatbot, using a copy-paste prompt the course provides. For a discussion, the AI is a Socratic partner that challenges their thinking and never writes the post. For an assignment, the AI is a coach: it asks questions, checks the reasoning shown, and waits for the student to revise. The student submits the chat link with the required summary or report.

Traditional alternative (no AI) · unpublished

The familiar way, one click away

The student does the work themselves and submits it, and the instructor grades it against the rubric. No AI required. It ships unpublished, opening with a one-line note to the instructor; publish it instead of the adaptive version if you prefer.

All 16 weeks

Every week, every component

Each week is a heading; every component under it links to the full student page. Week 8 is a teaching module that also carries the midterm bundle; Week 16 is the finals week, with the final exam bundle and no module.

Week 1

The Science of Biology

the characteristics of life as a set (order, energy processing, growth and development, reproduction, response, homeostasis, evolutionary adaptation) and why fire and crystals fail it; the cell as the smallest living unitthe levels of organization in order, from atom to biosphere, and emergent propertiesthe scientific method as a loop; a falsifiable hypothesis; evidence supports or fails to support; a controlled experiment's independent, dependent, and controlled variables, control group, and confoundhypothesis vs. theory; evolution by natural selection named plainly as the unifying framework of biology; the pinned drops-on-a-penny experiment read end to end and the Drops on a Penny lab

Week 2

The Chemistry of Life

atoms, elements, and the elements of life (about 96% oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen by mass); atom vs. moleculecovalent (share), ionic (transfer), and hydrogen (weak attraction) bonds; water's polaritywater's emergent properties — cohesion, adhesion, high specific heat, evaporative cooling, floating ice, solvent power — and why each matters for lifepH as an inverse logarithmic scale with a tenfold change per unit, worked on the pinned pH ladder; buffers resist, never prevent, a pH change (the blood's carbonic acid / bicarbonate system); the Red-Cabbage pH Indicator lab

Week 3

Biological Macromolecules

monomers and polymers; dehydration synthesis builds by removing water and hydrolysis breaks by adding it; digestion as hydrolysiscarbohydrates (starch and cellulose from the same monomer) and lipids (not polymers; triglycerides, saturated vs. unsaturated, phospholipids, steroids)proteins — twenty amino acids, the four levels of structure in order, denaturation, and the sickle-cell substitution as structure to functionnucleic acids — DNA vs. RNA; structure determines function as the course's spine; the iodine starch test and the Testing for Macromolecules in Food lab

Week 4

Cell Structure & Function

prokaryotic vs. eukaryotic cells, their size ranges, and what all cells share (membrane, cytoplasm, DNA, ribosomes)the organelle tour as structure to function; plant cells have both chloroplasts and mitochondria; cell walls in plants, fungi, and bacteriathe plasma membrane under the fluid mosaic model; passive transport (diffusion, facilitated diffusion, osmosis) with hypotonic, hypertonic, and isotonic read from the cell's side; active transport and the sodium-potassium pumpwhy cells stay small — the surface-area-to-volume ratio worked on the pinned cube cell (6, 3, 2, 1.5) and the How Big Can a Cell Get? lab

Week 5

Energy, Enzymes & Metabolism

kinetic vs. potential energy; the two laws of thermodynamics in plain language; a cell captures and transfers energy, never makes it; catabolic vs. anabolic, exergonic vs. endergonicATP as the energy currency — the ATP / ADP cycle — and why ATP is not DNAenzymes lower activation energy without changing the start or the end; the active site and substrate; lock-and-key refined to induced fit, both as models; an enzyme is reusedtemperature, pH, and substrate concentration; denaturation vs. slowing; cofactors, coenzymes, and feedback inhibition; the pinned catalase series (2, 5, 10, 0) and the Catalase & the Temperature of Life lab

Week 6

Cellular Respiration

the overall equation read both ways; cellular respiration is not breathing and nearly every living thing, plants included, does itthe stages in order with locations — glycolysis (cytoplasm; net 2 ATP; no oxygen), pyruvate oxidation, the citric acid cycle (also called the Krebs cycle; matrix; releases CO₂), the electron transport chain (inner membrane; the most ATP; oxygen the final electron acceptor)the mitochondrion's structure to function; the ATP yield taught in words as a range, never keyedfermentation when oxygen runs out — lactic acid in muscle and red blood cells, alcohol and CO₂ in yeast — on the pinned yeast-balloon series (0, 8, 14, 18) and the Yeast Fermentation lab

Week 7

Photosynthesis

the equation, autotrophs and heterotrophs, and the chloroplast described as a labeled figure — thylakoid, granum, stroma, chlorophyll reflecting greenthe light-dependent reactions in the thylakoid membrane: water is split, oxygen leaves, ATP and NADPH are madethe Calvin cycle in the stroma: CO₂ fixed by RuBisCO (named only), ATP and NADPH spent, G3P built; atom tracking — oxygen from water, carbon in sugar from CO₂; a tree's mass comes mostly from the airphotosynthesis vs. respiration side by side, both running in plants; the evolutionary lens on Earth's oxygen; the pinned floating-leaf-disk series and the Floating Leaf Disk lab

Week 8 Midterm

Midterm Review & Exam

cumulative review of Weeks 1 to 7 organized by the one distinction and the one ordered process each topic asks for: hypothesis vs. theory, covalent vs. ionic, cohesion vs. adhesion, the tenfold pH step, lipids are not polymers, prokaryote vs. eukaryote, osmosis moves water, the falling surface-area-to-volume ratio, enzymes reused, the respiration and photosynthesis ordersthe order-and-location habit: for any process, name the stages in order and the compartment each runs in (light new material that bridges to the division and molecular weeks)the midterm exam

The midterm exam bundle

Week 9

The Cell Cycle & Mitosis

the cell cycle as a loop — interphase (G1, S with DNA replication, G2) and the M phase — with most of a cell's life in interphasemitosis in order (prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase) and cytokinesis by cleavage furrow or cell plate; chromosome vs. chromatidthe purpose of mitosis — growth, repair, replacement, asexual reproduction, two identical diploid cells; checkpoints; cancer as division without the brakes (proto-oncogenes, tumor suppressors, p53 in words)the mitotic index as a measurement, worked on the pinned 100-cell root-tip count (20%) and the Counting Mitosis lab

Week 10

Meiosis & Sexual Reproduction

diploid vs. haploid (46 and 23 in humans); homologous chromosomes vs. sister chromatids; meiosis halves and fertilization restoresmeiosis I (homologs pair and separate) and meiosis II (sister chromatids separate) after one round of DNA replication — four unique haploid cellsthe two sources of variation — crossing over in prophase I and independent assortment in metaphase I — and the 2ⁿ count worked on the pinned n = 3 model and scaled to 2²³ = 8,388,608mitosis vs. meiosis feature by feature; variation as the raw material natural selection acts on; the Modeling Meiosis lab

Week 11

Mendelian Genetics

gene vs. allele, dominant vs. recessive, genotype vs. phenotype, homozygous vs. heterozygous; TT and Tt look alike but cross differentlyMendel placed factually (1866; rediscovered 1900) and the law of segregation; the monohybrid Punnett square fully worked — genotypes 1:2:1, phenotypes 3:1probability — the product rule and the sum rule; the test cross (Tt × tt gives 1:1); a ratio is odds over many offspring, not a promise in fourindependent assortment and the dihybrid cross — 9:3:3:1 by the 16-box grid and by the product rule; the pinned coin-toss run (23, 52, 25) and the Coin-Toss Genetics lab

Week 12

Patterns of Inheritance

incomplete dominance (a blend: RW × RW gives 1 red : 2 pink : 1 white) vs. codominance (both shown: the AB blood type)multiple alleles and the ABO system — Iᴬ, Iᴮ, i — with the worked Iᴬi × Iᴮi cross (AB, A, B, O each 1/4)sex chromosomes and X-linked recessive inheritance — a male is hemizygous, so there is no male carrier; the worked carrier mother × unaffected father cross (1/2 of sons affected, 0 of daughters); linked genes as a footnotepedigrees — the symbols and the two decisions (dominant or recessive; autosomal or X-linked) on the pinned worked family; the Blood-Type & Pedigree Detective lab

Week 13

DNA Structure & Replication

the double helix described as a labeled figure — sugar-phosphate backbone, base pairs A–T and G–C by hydrogen bonds, antiparallel strands, complementary not identicalChargaff's rules worked as arithmetic on the pinned 30/30/20/20 composition; the history placed factually (Griffith, Avery, Hershey and Chase, Chargaff, Franklin and Wilkins, Watson and Crick, the 1962 prize) with no invented quotationssemiconservative replication against the conservative and dispersive models; Meselson and Stahl (1958) as the classic testhelicase unzips, DNA polymerase adds and proofreads, ligase seals; why base pairing makes copying reliable; the Strawberry DNA Extraction lab

Week 14

Gene Expression

the central dogma in order and with locations — DNA to mRNA in the nucleus (transcription), mRNA to protein at the ribosome in the cytoplasm (translation) — and how expression differs from replicationtranscription of the template strand with the pairing rules and the U-for-T rule; the genetic code — 64 codons, 61 sense, 3 stops, AUG the start and methionine, the reading frame, redundancytranslation — ribosome, tRNA, codon on the mRNA and anticodon on the tRNA, start, elongation, stop and releasethe two pinned genes decoded from template to protein (Met–Ala–Tyr; Met–Phe–Pro); the sickle-cell codon change GAG to GUG as the one-typo preview; the Transcribe & Translate a Gene lab

Week 15

Gene Regulation, Mutation & Biotechnology

gene regulation — same genome, different genes on; the lac operon as the on/off model; eukaryotic regulation at many levels, named onlymutations — silent, missense, nonsense, frameshift — worked on the pinned Gene 1 sequence; effects from neutral through harmful to beneficial; mutation as the raw material of variationthe biotechnology toolkit — PCR copies, gel electrophoresis sorts (smaller fragments travel farther), recombinant DNA splices (insulin in bacteria), CRISPR-Cas9 edits — and DNA profiling on the pinned virtual gel (Suspect 2)gene-editing ethics carried as questions — the somatic-vs-germline line, the 2023 CRISPR therapy approval and the 2018 embryo case named factually, the case for and the case for caution with no verdict; the Whose DNA Is It? virtual gel lab

Week 16 · finals week Final

Finals week

No module this week: the final exam bundle