Description
NEW TO THE TWELFTH EDITION
The twelfth edition focuses on big-picture concepts and themes in microbiology, encouraging students to visualize and synthesize more difficult topics such as microbial metabolism, immunology, and microbial genetics.
The twelfth edition meets all students at their respective levels of skill and understanding while addressing the biggest challenges that instructors face. Updates to the twelfth edition enhance the book’s consistent pedagogy and clear explanations. Some of the highlights follow.
● Cutting-edge media integration. Mastering Microbiology (www.masteringmicrobiology.com) provides unprecedented, cutting-edge assessment resources for instructors as well as self-study tools for students. Big Picture Coaching Activi-ties are paired with the book’s new Big Picture: Tough Topics and Big Picture: Disease features; Interactive Microbiology is a dynamic suite of interactive tutorials and animations that teach key concepts in microbiology; and MicroBoosters are brief video tutorials that cover key concepts that some students need to review or re-learn.
● Big Picture “tough topic” features. These two-page spreads focus on the most challenging topics for students to master: metabolism (Chapter 5), genetics (Chapter 8), and immunology (Chapter 16). Each spread breaks down these important concepts into manageable steps and gives students a clear learning framework for the related chapters. Each includes a quick-reference (QR) code that allows students to link to related MicroFlix videos with their smartphones.
● Big Picture Disease features. These two-page spreads appear within each organ-system disease chapter (Chapters 21–26) as well as Chapter 19 (Disorders of the Immune System). Each spread focuses on a particular disease and applies it to a related real-world challenge, many dealing with public health issues.
● Reworked complement section in Chapter 16 (Innate Immunity: Nonspecific Defenses of the Host). New art and more straightforward discussions make this challenging and critical material easier for students to understand
and retain.
● In the Clinic. This new feature, appearing at the start of every chapter, includes critical thinking questions that encourage students to think as health care professionals would in various clinical scenarios and spark student interest in the forthcoming chapter content.
● ASM guidelines. The American Society of Microbiology has released six underlying concepts and 22 related topics to provide a framework for key microbiological topics deemed to be of lasting importance beyond the classroom. The twelfth edition explains the themes and competencies at the beginning of the book and incorporates callouts when chapter content matches one of these 22 topics. Doing so addresses two key challenges: it helps students and instructors focus on the enduring principles of the course, and it provides another pedagogical tool for instructors to assess students’ understanding and encourage critical thinking.