Teaching genetic drift: new approaches to encourage non-deterministic thinking about evolution

This teaching module is designed to help undergraduate students dismantle preconceived notions about evolution and deepen their understanding of genetic drift as a non-deterministic evolutionary process. Students tend to enter introductory biology courses with the preconception that evolution is primarily the result of natural selection. Multiple studies have shown that students commonly retain this misconception after standard coursework in evolutionary biology. In our interdisciplinary module, we present activities, lecture slides, and additional resources to help students build intuition on the contribution of randomness and stochasticity in evolution, and dislodge and further prevent misguided beliefs in genetic determinism and essentialism. Our hands-on activities include those that engage with the scientific literature, computer simulations, Queer theory, and poetry. The major learning objectives of this module are for students to be able to describe the role of randomness and stochasticity in evolution, and to ultimately argue that genetic drift is always acting in biological populations.