Table 3 Representative quotes from the focus groups suggesting that taking the course demonstrated the importance of applying evolutionary thinking to their day-to-day lives

“This class completely changed my thinking. I wasn’t really interested in evolution. I thought it was insignificant. But my imagination and my interest rose significantly.”

“I kind of related it to everything I do now. I’m at the bar and seeing that everything you do is related to getting ahead. It’s so just set up in the back of our minds, we’re always thinking about promoting fitness and stuff, but you’d never really think about it until now.”

“I’m in a cell biology 2 course and we were learning about cancer. I was in class and thinking about how does this cancer cell, how do all of these mutations benefit this cancers cell? I was like ‘wait a second, what am I doing?’ I was thinking about it from an evolutionary perspective. I thought about it then; I was really applying the stuff and I’m going home and I’m telling my parents about cool stuff that we’ve learned in class and am like ‘Did you know this?!’ and they’re like ‘No.’ ‘Well now you do!’”

“…colds have always been around since humans have been around so we must have defenses, just let them work. Fever is a defense. I had no idea, I thought fever was a symptom and something that was not good but it speeds up your metabolism and helps you heal better.”