InTeGrate and the Quantitative Undergraduate Biology Education and Synthesis (QUBES) project have partnered to support the adaptation of these geoscience modules into introductory biology courses. The modules all include a systems thinking approach while focusing on students' metacognitive abilities. The QUBES project partners with high quality content providers, like InTeGrate, to coordinate long duration (3-4 month), low intensity (biweekly synchronous meetings) faculty communities called faculty mentoring networks (FMN). The goal of a FMN is to support the faculty community through the process of customizing the materials for use in their instructional settings, implementing them with students, and publishing the products for use by other faculty. These efforts provide rich scholarly experiences for participants and add value to the existing teaching materials by building paradata (information about the use of the materials) that will support future adoption.

Situated learning postulates that learning is embedded in experience such that learning outcomes for participants in the FMN are a product of their efforts to incorporate geoscience concepts into biology courses. Analysis of FMN activities from the perspective of situated learning in a community of practice allows for identification of mechanisms through which participants learn from their experience, each other, and input and facilitation from the mentors. Understanding how the participants experienced the FMN leads to identification of components of the FMN that were particularly instrumental or detrimental to faculty adaptation and implementation of InTeGrate materials. Faculty are adapting InTeGrate modules for the biology context with a range of approaches and degrees of revision. Analysis of how faculty approach these changes provides insight into strategies for supporting more faculty members in the use of existing materials in new disciplinary settings.