Development of a case--study based undergraduate course on astrobiology

The case--study approach has been gaining popularity in the sciences in recent years, but is still not in wide use in the physical sciences, such as physics and astronomy. We propose to create an entire course ---at the introductory undergraduate level--- on astrobiology, the study of formation, proliferation and evolution of life in the universe. We will teach an entire course at the University of Alabama in Huntsville using an array of cases spanning many types of cases, and after formative and summative feedback revise the cases, and repeat. The end product of this effort will be a collection of cases, available to the wide community of instructors free of charge, to be used in their own courses.