WFU Faculty's BioBook Gaining National Attention

Sitting at the front of the class and attentively listening to a professor’s lecture won’t be enough for college students aiming to impress their professors once the new BioBook rolls out.

With BioBook, an interactive educational tool for tablets, professors can monitor student progress — from how they’re keeping up to the rest of the class to what page they’re at in the text book.

Now the makers of the BioBook are waiting with bated breath to find out what Apple is planning to announce this Thursday — and whether the two companies are about to become competitors.

BioBook is the creation of two Wake Forest University professors: Jed Macosko, an assistant professor of physics and Dan Johnson, a senior lecturer in biology. They hope the interactive learning tool will spark the interest of non-biology majors early in their college careers. Macosko says this precarious time is when students drop out or lose interest in learning. Perhaps, this program can help.

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Next Generation eBook Evolves at Wake Forest

Biology 101 and other introductory college science courses can be a significant barrier to overall college success. This well-documented finding led A. Daniel Johnson, a senior lecturer in biology, and Jed Macosko, an associate professor of physics, to search for a new way to help their Wake Forest University students learn about genetics, ecology and evolution.

“Biology textbooks, and science textbooks in general, are full of dense language, excessive content and a rigid format that discourages learning,” said Johnson. “Current electronic textbooks are no better than their print counterparts.”

What started as an idea for an iPad application evolved into a more accessible tool for the next generation of electronic textbooks, which Johnson and Macosko call “BioBook.” Read more.