Codon is an evidence-based teaching and learning courseware platform for college biology courses.
The fine print, up front. Our courseware replaces overpriced textbooks and traditional online homework platforms; it integrates with all the major learning management systems. Student subscription prices range from $35 to $48 per course/per term; students retain access to their courses for at least four years.
We focus on the most effective and equitable practices that are hard to implement without good technology and high-quality content. For example:
Codon’s Course Planner helps faculty design and teach aligned high-structure courses using lesson-level learning objectives and backward design.*
Codon’s Study Path helps students develop stronger self-regulated learning skills by applying self-testing, spaced learning, and metacognition.
In our majors biology courseware, Introducing the Life Sciences by Scott Freeman et al, students learn from novel Readiness Readings that are streamlined, active, and replace traditional textbooks.
A creative (but tedious) low-tech way to track alignment of course components. One the first challenges we addressed was to provide course frameworks that align (via backward design) learning objectives ==> assessments ==> in-class and out-of-class content.
*All of our learning objectives are written by experts and have been vetted over many years by the community. For example, our course Introducing the Life Sciences by Scott Freeman (University of Washington) et al, is based on validated learning objectives from the NSF consensus study Nationally endorsed learning objectives to improve course design in introductory biology by Hennessey and Freeman recently published in PLOS ONE.