Undergraduate Educators

Toxicology Learning Framework

With the goal of producing useful resources for educators to encourage students along the pathway to graduate school and careers in toxicology, the SOT Education Committee's Undergraduate Subcommittee established a work group to develop learning objectives for undergraduate toxicology courses. Publication of the resulting framework will facilitate the development and sharing of evidenced-based teaching materials for toxicology educators throughout the world and expand toxicology’s impact to a broader audience. This framework supports the NSF AAAS Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology recommendations for student-centered learning that reflect the process of science, topics connected to the lives of students, and what we know about effective learning practices.

The toxicology learning objectives echo the core Vision and Change concepts, which are evolution; pathways and transformations of energy and matter; information flow, exchange, and storage; structure and function; and systems. Toxicology learning objectives will provide guidance for faculty teaching toxicology in a basic undergraduate toxicology course as well as in other courses, and exclude examples and case study references. After reviewing course syllabi and textbooks, the group proposed these five core toxicology concepts: evolution; pathways and transformations of energy and matter; systems toxicology; biological information; and risk assessment. In addition, learning objectives were determined and additional detail outlined for each, such that there are four levels of detail. Publication of this framework alongside those of the other major life science disciplines (CourseSource, LifeSciTRC) will facilitate the development and sharing of evidenced-based teaching materials for toxicology educators throughout the world and expand toxicology’s impact to a broader audience.