Goals of the Fifteenth Edition
Dr. Sylvia Mader’s text, Inquiry into Life, was originally developed to reach out to science-shy students. The text now represents
one of the cornerstones of introductory biology education. Inquiry into Life was founded on the belief that teaching science from
a human perspective, coupled with human applications, would make the material more relevant to the student. Interestingly, even
though it has been over forty years since the first edition was published, this style of relevancy-based education remains the
focus of the national efforts to increase scientific literacy in the general public.
Our modern society is based largely on advances in science and technology over the past few decades. As we present in this
text, there are many challenges facing humans, and an understanding of how science can help analyze, and offer solutions to,
these problems is critical to our species’ health and survival.
The front cover of this text was chosen to indicate not only that humans are the stewards of the planet, but also that we have
interactions with almost all of the life in the biosphere. It is important that we know not only why we are different, but how we are
the same as the species we share the planet with. Students in today’s world are being exposed, almost on a daily basis, to exciting
new discoveries and insights that, in many cases, were beyond our predictions even a few short years ago. It is our task, as
instructors, not only to make these findings available to our students, but to enlighten students as to why these discoveries are
important to their lives and society. At the same time, we must provide students with a firm foundation in those core principles on
which biology is founded, and in doing so, provide them with the background to keep up with the many discoveries still to come.
In addition to the evolution of the introductory biology curriculum, students and instructors are increasingly requesting digital
resources to utilize as learning resources. McGraw-Hill Education has long been an innovator in the development of digital
resources, and this text, and its authors, are at the forefront of the integration of these technologies into the science classroom.
The authors of the text identified several goals that guided them through the revision of Inquiry into Life, Fifteenth Edition:
1. updating of chapter openers and the Science in Your Life features to focus on issues and topics important in a nonscience
majors classroom
2. utilization of the data from the LearnSmart adaptive learning platforms to identify content areas within the text that
students demonstrated difficulty in mastering
3. refinement of digital assets to provide a more effective assessment of learning outcomes to enable instructors in the
flipped, online, and hybrid teaching environments
4. development of a new series of videos and websites to introduce relevancy and engage students in the content
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