I determined the scope and sequence for all primary topics, that is, those with calculated MIRs reported by AAMC and those included in final MCAT biology content specifications, in five introductory majors biology textbooks.
The AAMC surveys medical school faculty and students extensively to determine relative importance ratings of MCAT biology and other science content specifications; it then surveys instructors of introductory majors biology courses, those required by AAMC medical schools, to establish the extent to which those instructors include candidate MCAT topics in their majors introductory biology courses.
The AAMC's MCAT biology content specifications provide clear learning objectives for any introductory biology course in the United States required of premedical students by the AAMC (2011b) and offered for those students.
Introductory language courses are typically listed in the YCPS as single-term courses, however yearlong specification for Introductory Spanish, for example, is indicated as SPAN 110a and SPAN 120b.
While this course will focus only on the introductory engineering aspects in signal design and introduce some local agencies' equivalent standards and specifications that vary from Caltrans, the goal is for the course participants to become familiar with standards and specifications that guide the design and lead to successful project delivery of an operational traffic signal.
A 'test instrument specification matrix' was devised to design the test items that would be used to determine the expected introductory programming knowledge acquisition.
All five introductory majors texts sampled included all (n = 51) or all but one of the primary MCAT content specifications, that is, those with MIRs determined through AAMC's surveys of MCAT stakeholders.
To examine these sorts of impacts on different student audiences taking gateway biology courses, I have compared the MCAT biology content specifications with the scope and sequence of topics in biology textbooks intended by their publishers for introductory majors or GE courses.
The AAMC determined its MCAT biology content specifications through surveys of faculty and students of medical schools and biology "faculty [members] teaching introductory courses at [each] … undergraduate school [ n = 166] … that had supplied at least ten [recent] MCAT examinees" (AAMC, 2002, p. 1).
Introductory treatments cost €29.90.
