Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) can be a very effective means to introduce a large number of students to research. CUREs are often an extension of the instructor's research, which may make them difficult to replicate in other settings because of differences in expertise or facilities. The BASIL (Biochemistry Authentic Scientific Inquiry Lab) CURE has evolved over the past 4 years as faculty members with different backgrounds, facilities, and campus cultures have all contributed to a robust curriculum focusing on enzyme function prediction that is suitable for implementation in a wide variety of academic settings.
The need for a significant improvement in undergraduate STEM education has been broadly recognized. We have designed and implemented a research‐driven curriculum for undergraduate biochemistry labs. The primary purposes of this project are to (1) improve understanding of the process of training students to be effective scientists, (2) test the hypothesis that “undergraduate students can characterize proteins of unknown function as the central theme of their biochemistry teaching laboratory”, and (3) that actually doing hypothesis‐driven experimental science is a useful tool in training students to become scientists. Our curriculum has been implemented at six campuses (California Polytechnic, Hope, Oral Roberts, RIT, St. Mary's, and Ursinus). Students are combining computational (in silico) and wet lab (in vitro) techniques as they characterize proteins whose three‐dimensional structures are known but to which functional annotations have not been assigned. The undergraduate biochemistry lab at RIT is designated as a “program writing intensive” course targeting discipline specific forms of writing. In addition to traditional writing exercises (lab journals and experimental reports), students are also required to maintain an eportfolio as a means of reflection, analysis, and critique of skills, protocols, and performance. The eportfolio affords the students opportunities to not only directly assess their own learning gains through reflection and self‐critique of their performance in the course, it also allows the instructor to provide more personalized feedback and support of the students development in both the course materials and scientific writing. Example eportfolios will be presented in addition to the methods of assessment and the outcomes from the course.Support or Funding InformationThis project is supported by NSF IUSE 1503811.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.