Bringing the excitement and motivation of research to students; Using inquiry and research‐based learning in a year‐long biochemistry laboratory

Abstract

Research-based learning in a teaching environment is an effective way to help bring the excitement and experience of independent bench research to a large number of students. The program described here is the second of a two-semester biochemistry laboratory series. Here, students are empowered to design, execute and analyze their own experiments for the entire semester. This style of laboratory replaces a variety of shorter labs in favor of an in depth research-based learning experience. The concept is to allow students to function in independent research groups. The research projects are focused on a series of wild-type and mutant clones of malate dehydrogenase. A common research theme for the laboratory helps instructors administer the course and is key to delivering a research opportunity to a large number of students. The outcome of this research-based learning laboratory results in students who are much more confident and skilled in critical areas in biochemistry and molecular biology. Students with research experience have significantly higher confidence and motivation than those students without a previous research experience. We have also found that all students performed better in advanced courses and in the workplace.

Implementation of a Collaborative Series of Classroom-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences Spanning Chemical Biology, Biochemistry, and Neurobiology

“…BIOCHEM laboratory followed a classic procedure for creating site-directed protein variants and then studying the effect of these amino acid substitutions on the structure and function of an enzyme (Knutson et al ., 2010a,b). The novelty of BIOCHEM is the focus of the structure–function studies on biomedically relevant serine hydrolases from M. tuberculosis and the direct connection with the fluorogenic substrates from CHEMBIO.…”

“…The laboratory met once per week for 4 hours and also fulfilled university requirements for a writing-intensive course. The experimental design for BIOCHEM paralleled similar semester-long experiments at other institutions relating the structure and function of a protein using site-directed mutagenesis, but fused this overall course design with the larger scientific goal of characterizing important mycobacterial serine hydrolases (Bailey, 2009; Knutson et al ., 2010a; Kreiling et al ., 2011). …”

“…With the confirmed benefits of CUREs to students and faculty (Wu, 2013; Auchincloss et al ., 2014; Harvey et al ., 2014; Corwin et al ., 2015), a limited number of institutions have begun to develop CURE programs that span multiple courses or even an entire curriculum (Knutson et al ., 2010a,b; Russell et al ., 2015; Shapiro et al ., 2015; Sanders et al ., 2016). These larger-scale CUREs provide tractable models of modern, collaborative science and move toward the complex, interdisciplinary nature of scientific investigation.…”

The effectiveness of research-based physics learning module with predict-observe-explain strategies to improve the student’s competence

“…The implementation of research-based learning can improve the activities, skills, and knowledge of students in science lessons [17,18]. The research-based physics learning effectively improves students' competence in the knowledge, skills and attitudes domain [19].…”

Commentary: Innovation in the biochemistry/molecular biology laboratory

“…[1]; one of many published examples illustrated in ref. [2]). More frequently these types of open-ended labs are being associated with areas of active research related to faculty scholarship (examples from recent Innovation series include refs.…”