Weekly Flow: an Effective Organizational Tool for Structuring Biology Courses and Supporting Student Learning

Here, I describe a “Weekly Flow” strategy for structuring college biology courses and making organization transparent to students. Building a course around an established weekly schedule that consists of the same, or similar, elements (for example, assessments, readings, assignment types, and/or class activities) provides structure and predictability that helps students with time management and therefore enables them to engage more deeply with the course material. This flexible framework can be applied in a wide variety of course types and teaching modalities. Adding this explicit structure to a course, or simply using the framework to make existing course organization more transparent to students, is a simple intervention that supports student learning by facilitating, modeling, and providing an opportunity to practice effective time management, something many undergraduate students struggle with.