Recent recommendations for biology education highlight the role of authentic research experiences early in undergraduate education as a means of increasing the number and quality of biology majors. These experiences will inform students on the nature of science, increase their confidence in doing science, as well as foster critical thinking skills, an area that has been lacking despite it being one of the desired outcomes at undergraduate institutions and with future employers. With these things in mind, we have developed an introductory biology laboratory course where students design and execute an authentic microbiology research project. Students in this course are assimilated into the community of researchers by engaging in scholarly activities such as participating in inquiry, reading scientific literature, and communicating findings in written and oral formats. After three iterations of a semester-long laboratory course, we found that students who took the course showed a significant increase in their understanding of the nature of authentic research and their level of critical thinking skills.
“Genetic Analysis of Adaptation to Osmotic Stress in
Salmonella
,” the IBI Prize–winning module, uses mutant isolation and DNA sequencing to engage students in bacterial genetics and evolution.
The pivot to remote and hybrid learning during the Covid-19 pandemic presented a challenge for many in academia. Most institutions were not prepared to support this rapid change, and instructors were left with the burden of converting a traditional face-to-face course into multiple modalities with very limited preparation time.
The Small World Initiative (SWI) developed at the Center for Scientific Teaching at Yale uses an undergraduate research course approach to crowdsource the search for new antibiotics. The SWI framework has both a research and an educational component. Research consists of culturing soil microbes, screening for antibiotic activity against pathogens, 16s rRNA gene sequencing, and extracting metabolites. The educational component is embedded in the research framework as students take ownership of the project that includes experimental design, data analysis and presentations, while learning core biological concepts within a number of different introductory courses. Giving the students the opportunity to experience the excitement and process of research in the first years of college provides a positive, realistic reflection of science, resulting in higher retention rates within STEM fields. SWI is currently piloted at 25 diverse institutions from around the country, including community colleges and non‐traditional universities. In the pilot phase, student attitudes about learning science, experiences as a scientist, and relationship to a laboratory research project are evaluated using pre‐ and post surveys. We present the framework of the SWI and different implementation strategies as well as preliminary results of both isolation of antibiotic producers and student responses.
Grant Funding Source: Supported by The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, Davis Educational Foundation, HHMI
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