Biological Principles (BIOL 1510) at Georgia Tech is required course for many science and engineering majors and is typically taught in a 200+ seat flipped lecture format. Until this Fall 2015, students were required to purchase a textbook and subscription to an on-line homework system, Mastering Biology. In Fall 2015, a team of three faculty replaced the textbook with an open source collection of instructor-created written content and instructor-curated video materials. We also replaced the on-line homework system with instructor-written questions delivered to students outside of class in Learning Catalytics. In-class activities remained the same, where students submitted Learning Catalytics responses while working with informal student groups in class. Here we report the results of a comparison of student learning gains between Fall 2015 and Fall 2014, with a traditional textbook, using student learning metrics of comparable test questions, homework questions, and in-class activity questions, as well as student perceptions of their learning from participant surveys.
