Achievement gaps on exam scores between white students and students from historically underrepresented groups still frequently exist in introductory biology courses. This is true even when controlling for academic ability, suggesting that these underrepresented groups experience non-academic barriers in the classroom that result in under-performance. A recent publication in CBE - Life Sciences Education from Hannah Jordt, Sarah Eddy, and colleagues demonstrates that short, online class exercises designed to mitigate one such barrier, stereotype threat, can reduce this achievement gap for underrepresented minority students in Biology 180.

This work builds upon previous work from the UW Biology Education Research Group (BERG lab) showing that increasing structure and active learning in Biology 180 also decreases achievement gaps, and is part of an ongoing effort to understand how particular pedagogical strategies and classroom exercises can promote equity in the classroom.