Undergraduate Biology Majors Research Articles

Advanced biology students' individual conceptions of scientific researchers after participating in biomedically relevant CRE.

While undergraduate research has been shown to be a high-impact educational practice, it is logistically impossible for all undergraduate biology majors to have long-term faculty-mentored research experience. Therefore, biology educators and researchers must devise opportunities to engage more students in undergraduate research outside of working directly in their labs. Course-Based Research Experiences (CREs), structured as authentic research experiences, are one such opportunity. In this work, we describe the effects of a CRE with biomedical relevance on students' research skills, attitudes toward science, and perceptions of scientific research and scientific researchers. Results demonstrate that students gained experience in independent research skills including designing their own research project, being accountable for part of a project, and writing a research proposal. Students' perceptions of scientific research and researchers, assessed by the Draw-A-Researcher Task, did not show changes among the whole group, but individual analysis yielded meaningful results related to students' personal changes in how they perceived research and researchers, including their perception of themselves as researchers. This work demonstrates the substantial impact of CREs on upper-level biology undergraduate and graduate students.

An active learning card game to teach microbial pathogenesis to undergraduate biology majors.

Interactive classroom activities are an effective way to reinforce knowledge and promote student engagement. In this paper, we introduce the Pathogenesis Card Game (PCG), an innovative card game that engages students in a battle between microbial pathogens and the host immune system. Each student is given a set of cards that consist of either common host defenses or common pathogen evasion strategies. In pairs, students play a host defense card versus a pathogenesis card. Host defense cards include neutralize (antibody production), eat (phagocytosis), and destroy (degranulation). Pathogenesis cards present evasive strategies including mimic (molecular mimicry), escape (hemolysin production), hide (polysaccharide capsule), block (antioxidant defense), cut (protease secretion), and disguise (antigenic variation). Students develop a mastery of microbial pathogenesis through active gameplay by deliberating the outcome of each unique host-pathogen interaction. Furthermore, they learn the role of cells in the immune system and how pathogens can evade these immune defenses. PCG was piloted in a 300-level introductory microbiology course for 22 undergraduate students, comprising primarily biology and nursing majors. Both quantitative and qualitative student evaluations of the activity strongly suggest that PCG is an engaging, effective, and useful way to teach microbial pathogenesis. This activity provides a 60-minute lesson plan and corresponding materials that can be used to facilitate the introduction of pathogenesis to a typical undergraduate microbiology course. PCG offers instructors a framework to teach microbial pathogenesis and gives students the opportunity to construct their own knowledge about pathogen immune evasion in an engaging and interactive way.

Not all Doom and Gloom: Students in the Anthropocene Develop Collaborative Skills Using Social Media and Surveys

Informing undergraduates on environmental conservation education topics related to the Anthropocene can present challenges. Allowing students to work together in groups to actively design projects to both conduct surveys and inform others via social media are two related strategies for student based instruction as a form of learning. As part of a special topic conservation biology course, Humans in the Anthropocene, undergraduate biology majors collected data from surveys on topics related to the Anthropocene, while concomitantly using social media (posting 2 TikTok videos) to engage in science communication and learn about factors impacting topics. Responses to Likert scale questions and reflections from this group activity were overwhelmingly positive with students reporting they preferred this form of hands-on learning and that this activity piqued their interest, and students learned valuable skills on data presentation alongside creative communication using social media. Incorporating surveys, videos, and presentations therefore is an effective method for engaging students and communities regarding environmental issues related to the Anthropocene.

Live Bird Webcams Engage College Introductory Biostatistics Students

Data manipulation and statistical analysis are increasingly important learning goals for undergraduate biology majors, yet many biology students approach statistics courses with apprehension. We designed a set of activities to use engaging subject matter, bird feeder webcams located throughout the Western Hemisphere, to foster a growth mindset by gradually building on data analysis and experimental design skills, using the American Statistical Association’s educational guidelines.

Power of a Snapshot Observation: Using iNaturalist To Teach Undergraduates about Ethograms in Animal Behavior.

Engaging undergraduate biology majors may present challenges for educators disseminating science concepts utilizing standard lecture classroom formats. Moreover, animal behavior courses teaching ethology may often require the use of live animals, field excursions, or students having to develop projects which can be both time-consuming or require financial investment, or that may not be well-suited to the flexibility of being taught online. Therefore, developing in-class activities which allow students to use self-discovery when generating their own observational data, work in groups, and practice hands-on science may serve to ameliorate these challenges facing faculty teaching animal behavior course content. To this end, I developed a straightforward, engaging in-class activity which allowed students to scan images available on the smartphone identifier iNaturalist to generate their own ethograms (catalogs of behaviors) for local state species. Students successfully described behaviors across a variety of animal taxa, reptiles, mammals, birds, and insects when generating their own ethograms and data, and they actively discussed how this activity enabled them to further understand both ethograms and their importance to animal behavior and overall how animals behave and allocate time performing a variety of behaviors. This activity can be modified for further use in both introductory and upper-level course work in organismal biology and can incorporate data analysis, graphing, or presentation skill sets for science majors.

The effect of gender composition and pedagogical approach on major and non-major undergraduates biology students’ achievement

ABSTRACT This study hypothesized whether the gender group composition in traditional learning (TL) versus collaborative learning (CL) classrooms of undergraduate biology majors and nonmajors correlate with students’ achievements. We measured the effect on gender and the gender-specific achievements of the TL versus CL approach in single-gender and mixed-gender classes. A significant gender gap was found in the achievements of both nonmajor and major students. Females achieved higher grades in TL and CL sections in single-gender classes; overall, academic achievements between females (F) and males (M) demonstrated a significant difference at P<.05. The effect size value between TL versus CL indicated that males benefited more than females implementing CL mixed-gender (2F+2M) in nonmajors and majors. While females in single-gender CL and TL classes performed higher than males, females performed relatively low in mix-gender CL (2F+2M). These findings indicate that gender-specific and context-specific learning pedagogies are required since they impact students’ achievement.

Virtual Coverboarding: Using Local Biodiverity to Engage Science Majors

There is a current need to develop engaging, informative online activities for science majors and potential future citizen scientists, particularly given the increase in the online teaching environment following COVID-19. Given this potential for online teaching to continue to increase, it becomes ever more essential to provide undergraduate students with methods that allow students to remotely access common methods used for sampling species while still engaging students in learning about local species diversity. This study assessed the potential for an interactive, online course-specific website to connect and inform first-year undergraduate biology majors (pre-health majors to environmental science) on local leaf litter species diversity. The website included species encountered as part of an ongoing on-campus biodiversity monitoring project using coverboards. Students navigated to the website, answered questions on the types of organisms, and completed a short survey. The survey questions reviewed whether the website was engaging and informed students on campus biodiversity of both reptiles and arthropods. Students overwhelmingly responded positively that the website was helpful to advise them on local species and their natural histories and engaged and piqued their interest. Therefore, we recommend incorporating course websites as teaching tools to catalog local species to teach undergraduate biology majors.

Talking Science: Undergraduates' Everyday Conversations as Acts of Boundary Spanning That Connect Science to Local Communities.

Biologists produce knowledge that can be applied to both global and personal challenges. Thus, communicating this knowledge to the general public is becoming increasingly important. One way information can move between different communities is through boundary spanners. Boundary spanners are individuals embedded in both communities who can communicate information known by one community to the other. We explore whether undergraduate biology majors can act as boundary spanners connecting their biology departments to laypeople in their personal networks. We conducted 20 interviews with upper-division first-generation college students at a large Hispanic-serving institution. These students were engaging in everyday conversations about science with people in their personal networks. They engaged in behaviors that characterize boundary spanners: translating scientific language into more common language and knowledge building, that is, providing background concepts that community members need to understand a topic. Finally, students were sometimes perceived as credible resources and sometimes were not. We explore some of the causes of this variation. The boundary spanning of undergraduates could help address one of the major challenges facing the scientific community: spreading the use of scientific knowledge in personal and policy decision making.

Application of a Bacterial Experimental Evolution System to Visualize and Teach Evolution in Action: A Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience

Concepts of evolution are typically taught through examples of extremely long timescales, which do not always resonate broadly. Here, we describe a course-based undergraduate research experience tailored for junior and senior undergraduate biology majors. Students visualize and learn in real-time how evolution can operate in bacteria in response to problems associated with a high-density lifestyle. Students directly evolve mutant strains, conduct whole genome sequencing to identify the causal mutations, carry out bioinformatics analysis to predict molecular consequences of the mutations, engineer their mutants to become antibiotic-resistant, and compete them head-to-head in a class-wide round-robin tournament to infer the properties of natural selection. The presented format is designed for a full semester, but the modular structure of the course allows instructors to make simple modifications for a shorter duration. A substantial portion of this course also focuses on scientific communication. Each student prepares a lab report structured as an original research article to gain experience in writing a publication quality manuscript. Individual components of their reports are prepared throughout the semester and are followed with instructor- and peer-based draft edits. Finally, students are tasked with working as a team to deliver an oral presentation, which drives them to come to a consensus on the interpretation of their group's data. Such a comprehensive research experience is difficult for a student to acquire without securing a research position in a faculty lab, but this course allows a large group of students to directly experience and actively contribute to open-ended and hypothesis-driven research.

Development of an Online General Biology Open Educational Resource (OER) Laboratory Manual.

ABSTRACTCurrently, many academic institutions are using one or more variations of online modalities due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and science educators face a unique challenge with distance-learning laboratories. Many resources to engage students in virtual, interactive laboratory activities exist, but we found that high costs and/or overlooked content left gaps for several topics typically taught in a general, introductory biology course for undergraduate biology majors (e.g., organismal biology). Additionally, resources for an online lab must be identified and curated from multiple sources, requiring intense demands on the instructors’ time. To meet this need and to overcome the financial burden of high-cost lab manuals or software, we developed, piloted, and revised a series of online general biology lab exercises. We have published these exercises as an Open Educational Resource (OER) digital laboratory manual under the Creative Commons License Agreement, and they are accessible online via Manifold, Creative Commons, and the CUNY Academic Works portal.

Resequencing of Microbial Isolates: A Lab Module to Introduce Novices to Command-Line Bioinformatics.

Familiarity with genome-scale data and the bioinformatic skills to analyze it have become essential for understanding and advancing modern biology and human health, yet many undergraduate biology majors are never exposed to hands-on bioinformatics. This paper presents a module that introduces students to applied bioinformatic analysis within the context of a research-based microbiology lab course. One of the most commonly used genomic analyses in biology is resequencing: determining the sequence of DNA bases in a derived strain of some organism, and comparing it to the known ancestral genome of that organism to better understand the phenotypic differences between them. Many existing CUREs — Course Based Undergraduate Research Experiences — evolve or select new strains of bacteria and compare them phenotypically to ancestral strains. This paper covers standardized strategies and procedures, accessible to undergraduates, for preparing and analyzing microbial whole-genome resequencing data to examine the genotypic differences between such strains. Wet-lab protocols and computational tutorials are provided, along with additional guidelines for educators, providing instructors without a next-generation sequencing or bioinformatics background the necessary information to incorporate whole-genome sequencing and command-line analysis into their class. This module introduces novice students to running software at the command-line, giving them exposure and familiarity with the types of tools that make up the vast majority of open-source scientific software used in contemporary biology. Completion of the module improves student attitudes toward computing, which may make them more likely to pursue further bioinformatics study.

INaturalist as an engaging tool for identifying organisms in outdoor activities

ABSTRACT We evaluated an emerging smartphone application, iNaturalist, to increase taxonomic identification and engage first-year undergraduate biology majors in outdoor laboratories of aquatic ecosystems (stream and lake ecology) and terrestrial ecosystems (tree and leaf litter ecology). Labs involved identifying organisms using both standard field guides and keys, and comparing taxonomic identifications using the iNaturalist smartphone application derived from student images of organisms. Students were given post-laboratory surveys which assessed their preference for this increasingly popular smartphone application, whether they were more likely to use the application in the future and rate its ability and ease of use to properly identify organisms compared to traditional keys/field guides. This iNaturalist application worked most consistently for students with terrestrial organisms, when images were of sufficient quality. However, when only medium-high to high-quality photos were used, iNaturalist identifications ranged from 92.3% to 97.3% proper biological taxonomic classifications to standard organismal levels for an introductory biology course. Overall, iNaturalist provided greater taxonomic resolution with proper scientific and common names and additional natural history information for many organisms, piquing student interest. Incorporating this smartphone technology may increase identification of local biodiversity and student engagement in the biological sciences.

Development of the BioCalculus Assessment (BCA).

We describe the development and initial validity assessment of the 20-item BioCalculus Assessment (BCA), with the objective of comparing undergraduate life science students’ understanding of calculus concepts in different courses with alternative emphases (with and without focus on biological applications). The development process of the BCA included obtaining input from a large network of scientists and educators as well as students in calculus and biocalculus courses to accumulate evidential support of the instrument’s content validity and response processes of test takers. We used the Rasch model to examine the internal structure of scores from students who have experienced calculus instruction in the two methods. The analysis involved three populations (Calculus 1, Calculus 2, and Biocalculus) for which the Calc 1 and Calc 2 students were not exposed to calculus concepts in a life science setting, while the Biocalculus students were presented concepts explicitly with a life science emphasis. Overall, our findings indicate that the BCA has reasonable validity properties, providing a diagnostic tool to assess the relative learning success and calculus comprehension of undergraduate biology majors from alternative methods of instruction that do or do not emphasize life science examples.

Factors that Influence Persistence of Biology Majors at a Hispanic-Serving Institution

To promote diversity within the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce, we must identify factors that influence or hinder historically underrepresented minority (URM) students’ persistence to degrees in STEM. We documented potential factors that influence students’ persistence in an undergraduate biology program and created a 14-item, Likert-scale instrument. We recruited 137 undergraduate biology majors at a Hispanic-serving institution in Texas to report which factors they found influential in their decision to remain enrolled in their degree programs. We used a modified social cognitive career theory model of career choice to guide interpretation of the reported influences and identify patterns in responses. We documented three highly influential factors for all students: personal motivation, potential learning experiences, and job opportunities with the job opportunities showing a significant difference (P=0.036) between White and URM student groups. We also found a trend (P=0.056) indicating White students were more influenced by role models and mentors than URM students. Our findings suggest that personal motivation and potential job opportunities are the most influential factors driving students to seek educational opportunities that could lead to STEM careers. However, access to a diverse pool of role models also has the potential to provide positive impacts on student persistence in STEM.

A Framework to Guide Undergraduate Education in Interdisciplinary Science.

An expanded investment in interdisciplinary research has prompted greater demands to integrate knowledge across disciplinary boundaries. Vision and Change similarly made interdisciplinary expectations a key competency for undergraduate biology majors; however, we are not yet synchronized on the meaning of interdisciplinarity, making this benchmark difficult to meet and assess. Here, we discuss aspects of interdisciplinarity through a historical lens and address various institutional barriers to interdisciplinary work. In an effort to forge a unified path forward, we provide a working definition of interdisciplinary science derived from both the perspectives of science faculty members and scientific organizations. We leveraged the existing literature and our proposed definition to build a conceptual model for an Interdisciplinary Science Framework to be used as a guide for developing and assessing interdisciplinary efforts in undergraduate science education. We believe this will provide a foundation from which the community can develop learning outcomes, activities, and measurements to help students meet the Vision and Change core competency of “tapping into the interdisciplinary nature of science.”

A systemic approach to understand plants’ responses under abiotic stress: a laboratory exercise for undergraduate biology majors

ABSTRACT This article describes a ten week long laboratory exercise designed for undergraduate students aimed at enhancing their understanding of physiological and biochemical responses of plants under dehydration stress. Hypothesis was built around previous reports which suggested that exogenous application of certain elicitors leads to transient alleviation of dehydration stress in plants. The chosen elicitors were Calcium and Sodium Nitroprusside (Nitric Oxide elicitor) which were tested on Rice plants under dehydration stress. The experiments were divided into four categories: 1. Water Status and Osmotic adjustment: relative water content (RWC) and Proline content 2. Oxidative Damage: Lipid peroxidation of membranes, electrolyte leakage, total peroxide level 3. Metabolic Health: photosynthesis pigments (chl a, b and carotenoids) and 4. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenger enzymes: ascorbate peroxidase (Apx) and catalase (CaT) assays. The instructor along with the teaching assistants acted as a mentor by initially training the students in the required technical skills and then later guiding them through the course of the project. This curriculum embedded research exercise was designed to foster science process skills and develop integrative thinking for solving scientific problems by employing a hands-on approach in a plant physiology laboratory course.

Testing validity inferences for Genetic Drift Inventory scores using Rasch modeling and item order analyses

BackgroundConcept inventories (CIs) are commonly used tools for assessing student understanding of scientific and naive ideas, yet the body of empirical evidence supporting the inferences drawn from CI scores is often limited in scope and remains deeply rooted in Classical Test Theory. The Genetic Drift Inventory (GeDI) is a relatively new CI designed for use in diagnosing undergraduate students’ conceptual understanding of genetic drift. This study seeks to expand the sources of evidence examining validity and reliability inferences produced by GeDI scores. Specifically, our research focused on: (1) GeDI instrument and item properties as revealed by Rasch modeling, (2) item order effects on response patterns, and (3) generalization to a new geographic sample.MethodsA sample of 336 advanced undergraduate biology majors completed four equivalent versions of the GeDI. Rasch analysis was used to examine instrument dimensionality, item fit properties, person and item reliability, and alignment of item difficulty with person ability. To investigate whether the presentation order of GeDI item suites influenced overall student performance, scores were compared from randomly assigned, equivalent test versions varying in item-suite presentation order. Scores from this sample were also compared with scores from similar but geographically distinct samples to examine generalizability of score patterns.ResultsRasch analysis indicated that the GeDI was unidimensional, with good fit to the Rasch model. Items had high reliability and were well matched to the ability of the sample. Person reliability was low. Rotating the GeDI’s item suites had no significant impact on scores, suggesting each suite functioned independently. Scores from our new sample from the NE United States were comparable to those from other geographic regions and provide evidence in support of score generalizability. Overall, most instrument features were robust. Suggestions for improvement include: (1) incorporation of additional items to differentiate high-ability persons and improve person reliability, and (2) re-examination of items with redundant or low difficulty levels.ConclusionsRasch analyses of the GEDI instrument and item order effects expand the range and quality of evidence in support of validity claims and illustrate changes that are likely to improve the quality of this (and other) evolution education instruments.

Using Scaffolding and Deliberate Practice to Improve Abstract Writing in an Introductory Biology Laboratory Course

s play the pivotal role of selling an article to a prospective reader, and for students, the ability to communicate science in concise written form may foster scientific thinking. However, students struggle with abstract composition, and we lack evidence-based educational innovations to help them develop this skill. We designed, implemented, and assessed an intervention for abstract composition with elements of scaffolding and transparency to ask whether deliberate practice improves concise scientific writing in early career undergraduate biology majors. We evaluated student performance by analyzing abstracts written before and after the intervention and by assessing pre- and posttest student concept maps. We found that scaffolded learning improved student abstract writing, with the greatest gains in students’ ability to describe the motivation for their work. Using a set of tested tools to teach scientific writing has important implications for strengthening students’ capacity to reinforce and synthesize content in the future, whether that is in laboratory course exercises, in independent research, or as a transferable skill to general critical thinking.

Developing a Backup Plan: Implementing a Career-Planning Course for Undergraduate Biology Majors

Career-planning courses are known to be effective career interventions for undergraduates, but their effect on developing alternate career plans was previously unknown. Forming alternate career plans increases the likelihood that students have viable career options available to them upon graduation because it encourages students to realistically consider multiple possibilities. Here we describe a one-term career-planning course developed in the context of an undergraduate biology curriculum. We assessed whether this course promoted development of primary and alternate career plans using a pre/post survey. We saw a significant increase in the percentage of students indicating they had plans aimed at achieving primary (increase of 37%) and alternate (increase of 48%) career goals from the beginning to the end of the course. Preliminary outcomes suggest that implementation of this course correlates with an increase in the percentage of students who indicate they have a job after graduation (increase of 16%). This type of course could be implemented in many other contexts to support career development in diverse fields.

Investigating Novice and Expert Conceptions of Genetically Modified Organisms.

The aspiration of biology education is to give students tools to apply knowledge learned in the classroom to everyday life. Genetic modification is a real-world biological concept that relies on an in-depth understanding of the molecular behavior of DNA and proteins. This study investigated undergraduate biology students' conceptions of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) when probed with real-world, molecular and cellular, and essentialist cues, and how those conceptions compared across biology expertise. We developed a novel written assessment tool and administered it to 120 non-biology majors, 154 entering biology majors, 120 advanced biology majors (ABM), and nine biology faculty. Results indicated that undergraduate biology majors rarely included molecular and cellular rationales in their initial explanations of GMOs. Despite ABM demonstrating that they have much of the biology knowledge necessary to understand genetic modification, they did not appear to apply this knowledge to explaining GMOs. Further, this study showed that all undergraduate student populations exhibited evidence of essentialist thinking while explaining GMOs, regardless of their level of biology training. Finally, our results suggest an association between scientifically accurate ideas and the application of molecular and cellular rationales, as well as an association between misconceptions and essentialist rationales.