This paper presents a comprehensive exploration of the IPDPS teaching concept—a framework built upon the 5 core principles of interdisciplinarity, practicality, diversity, process-oriented, and soul-forging—and its systematic implementation in the general education course “Biology in Daily Life” at Sun Yat-sen University. Developed over 8 years of iterative practice, this educational model is designed to address critical challenges in cultivating top innovative talents within higher education. It specifically targets the overcoming of disciplinary barriers, the disconnection between academia and industry, the limitations of one-way knowledge transmission, the rigidity of traditional evaluation systems, and the lack of value guidance. The curriculum is innovatively structured around four life-centric modules—birth, aging, illness, and food—which seamlessly integrate cutting-edge advancements in life sciences with interdisciplinary knowledge, making complex biological concepts accessible and relevant to students from diverse academic backgrounds. Pedagogically, the course employs a rich array of teaching methods to activate student engagement and foster higher-order thinking skills. These include case-based learning driven by real-world problems, multi-sensory interactive experiences, storytelling to illustrate scientific discovery processes, and contrastive analysis of ethical dilemmas in science. A cornerstone of the implementation is a multi-tiered practical teaching system, encompassing mandatory in-class experiments, optional social investigations, corporate visits, and face-to-face sessions with industry leaders. This structure ensures learning extends from the classroom to real-world societal and industrial contexts. A significant reform is the shift from a summative to a process-oriented evaluation system. This system diversifies assessment methods and incorporates multiple evaluators, including teacher assessment, self-assessment, and structured peer review using detailed rubrics. This approach aims to stimulate intrinsic motivation, foster a growth mindset, and provide a more holistic measurement of student development. Fundamentally, the course deeply integrates value-shaping elements into its fabric. By incorporating themes of national identity, scientific spirit, bioethics, and cultural confidence through specific cases, the course forges students’ sense of social responsibility and ethical reasoning, ensuring their innovative capacities are guided by a strong moral compass. Assessment data from 2017 to 2024 demonstrates significant positive outcomes. Course satisfaction ratings have shown a remarkable increase, rising from 80.5% to 96.8%. Survey data from 245 students (2021-2024) indicates that the course effectively broadens interdisciplinary horizons, enhances independent thinking and problem-solving abilities, and successfully integrates knowledge acquisition with capacity building and value orientation. The course has successfully functioned as an “initial incubator and screening mechanism”for identifying and nurturing talented individuals, with some students even shifting their academic focus to biology as a result. In conclusion, the “Biology in Daily Life” course, underpinned by the IPDPS framework, provides a replicable and scalable paradigm for educational innovation in cultivating elite innovators. It represents a successful model for achieving the organic unity of knowledge impartation, ability cultivation, and value shaping in higher education. Future work will focus on optimizing differentiated content design for diverse student backgrounds, deepening practical teaching experiences, and establishing long-term tracking mechanisms for learning outcomes.
ZHU et al. (Thu,) studied this question.