Genomics Education Partnership: a research‐based approach to undergraduate teaching utilizing a centralized support system (618.39)

Abstract

The Genomics Education Partnership (GEP) is a consortium of educators with common research and educational goals in genomics, and is comprised of 100+ faculty members instructing 1000+ students annually. Our focus is 1) undergraduate education via research in comparative genomics and 2) assessment of pedagogy within diverse student populations. To examine the evolution of the Drosophila “dot” chromosome, students in GEP courses improved over 7 Mb of genomic sequence and generated over 1000 manually curated gene models. To assess pedagogy, we evaluated student learning gains in both the cognitive domain (pre‐ and post‐course knowledge quiz) and the affective domain (pre‐and post‐course CURE survey). We find that institutional characteristics have little impact on student outcomes, while the instructional time spent on the GEP projects has a significant impact on student experience. Cognitive learning gains are observed in both short and long implementation formats, and across a wide range of cognitive skill levels. However, only longer time investments show student benefits commensurate with those reported for students conducting summer research. A survey of faculty participants reveals that a centralized support system is critical for sustaining GEP. In summary, our data suggest that a research‐based curriculum with centralized support is a successful approach in STEM education.Grant Funding Source: Supported by grant #52007051 from the HHMI to SCRE and by the Washington University in St. Louis