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This article provides a summary of the ideas discussed at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology society-wide symposium on Leading Students and Faculty to Quantitative Biology through Active Learning. It also includes a brief review of the recent advancements in incorporating active learning approaches into quantitative biology classrooms. We begin with an overview of recent literature that shows that active learning can improve students' outcomes in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education disciplines. We then discuss how this approach can be particularly useful when teaching topics in quantitative biology. Next, we describe some of the recent initiatives to develop hands-on activities in quantitative biology at both the graduate and the undergraduate levels. Throughout the article we provide resources for educators who wish to integrate active learning and technology into their classrooms.

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Integrating experimental biology laboratory exercises with mathematical modeling can be an effective tool to enhance mathematical relevance for biologists and to emphasize biological realism for mathematicians. This paper describes a lab project designed for and tested in an undergraduate biomathematics course. In the lab, students follow and track the paths of individual brine shrimp confined in shallow salt water in a Petri dish. Students investigate the question, "Is the movement well characterized as a 2-dimensional random walk?" Through open, but directed discussions, students derive the corresponding partial differential equation, gain an understanding of the solution behavior, and model brine shrimp dispersal under the experimental conditions developed in class. Students use data they collect to estimate a diffusion coefficient, and perform additional experiments of their own design tracking shrimp migration for model validation. We present our teaching philosophy, lecture notes, instructional and lab procedures, and the results of our class-tested experiments so that others can implement this exercise in their classes. Our own experience has led us to appreciate the pedagogical value of allowing students and faculty to grapple with open-ended questions, imperfect data, and the various issues of modeling biological phenomena.

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