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1. Using the Intended–Enacted–Experienced Curriculum Model to Map the Vision and Change Core Competencies in Undergraduate Biology Programs and Courses

   https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.21-02-0054  

   Clemmons, Alexa W. ; Donovan, Deborah A. ; Theobald, Elli J. ; Crowe, Alison J. ( March 2022 , CBE—Life Sciences Education)

   Long, Tammy (Ed.)

   One critical step in the challenging process of curricular reform is determining how closely a curriculum aligns with national recommendations. Here, we examine the alignment of teaching, assessment, and student experience in undergraduate biology courses with the Vision and Change core competency recommendations. We applied the intended–enacted–experienced curriculum model to obtain a more complete, multiperspective view of the curriculum. First, we developed and piloted the BioSkills Curriculum Survey with more than 100 biology instructors across five institutions. Using multilevel logistic regression modeling of the survey data, we found that instructors were equally likely to report teaching all competencies; however, they reported assessing some competencies more than others. After adding course characteristics to our model, we found that the likelihood of teaching certain competencies depended on course type. Next, we analyzed class materials and student perceptions of instruction in 10 biology courses in one department. Within this smaller sample, we found that instructors messaged a narrower range of competency learning outcomes on their syllabi than they reported teaching on the survey. Finally, modeling revealed that inclusion of an outcome on assessments, but not syllabi, increased the likelihood that students and their instructor agreed whether it was taught. 

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2. Course Based Undergraduate Research Demystifies and Democratizes inquiry-based research for undergraduate STEM students.

   Hoffbuhr, K ; Mast, G ; Brady, B ; Blume, G ; Elliser, C ; Palmer, C ( June 2023 , Transforming Institution Conference)

   Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) have been shown to improve both persistence and graduation rates for women and students of color (Alquicira et al. 2022). Although these effects are observed broadly across higher education, they are especially pronounced in the context of the STEM fields (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2017). Although community colleges disproportionately enroll students who can most benefit from UREs, structural barriers make UREs rare at community colleges (Hewlett 2018). This change project, based at a mid-sized community college in Washington State, is part of the state’s Consortium for Undergraduate Research and Equity (CURE) and aspires to address the paucity of community college research opportunities in STEM through the design and implementation of a year-long research project for students enrolled in the primary course sequence for biology majors (approximately 50-100 annually). The project’s underlying theory of change is twofold. First, two local community partners and four science faculty use backward design to create a research project that embeds laboratory skills and learning outcomes in a year-long URE. Second, participating faculty replace the entire lab curriculum in the college’s three-course biology sequence with this applied year-long research project. Incorporating applied research into the college’s biology curriculum demystifies and democratizes inquiry-based research for first-generation, underrepresented, and/or academically underprepared students, who also may not have the financial privilege to participate in an unpaid internship that affords them such an experience. Preliminary findings from this change initiative will focus on project goals related to creating equitable access across a range of outcomes including demographic participation rates, the development of professional STEM research skills, and the extent to which UREs enhance a community college student’s sense of belonging among a larger scientific community. 

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3. Embracing the inclusion of societal concepts in biology improves student understanding

   https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1154609  

   Adams, Paula E. ; Driessen, Emily P. ; Granados, Enya ; Ragland, Penny ; Henning, Jeremiah A. ; Beatty, Abby E. ; Ballen, Cissy J. ( July 2023 , Frontiers in Education)

   Understanding the relationship between science and society is included as a core competency for biology students in the United States. However, traditional undergraduate biology instruction emphasizes scientific practice and generally avoids potentially controversial issues at the intersection of science and society, such as representation in STEM, historical unethical research experiments, biology of sex and gender, and environmental justice. As calls grow to highlight this core competency, it is critical we investigate the impact of including these topics in undergraduate biology education. Here, we implemented a semester-long ideological awareness curriculum that emphasized biases, stereotypes, and assumptions that have shaped historical and contemporary science. We taught this curriculum to one section of a non-majors introductory biology course and compared the outcomes to a section of the same course taught using traditional biology content (hereafter the ‘traditional’ section) that did not emphasize societal topics. Both sections of students created concept maps for their final exam, which we coded for ‘society’ and ‘biology’ content. We then assessed (1) the amount of societal content included in the concept maps, and (2) which societal topics were mentioned in each section. We found that students in the ideologically aware section included more societal content in their concept maps than the students in the traditional section. Students exposed to the ideological awareness modules often mentioned the topics covered in those modules, whereas students in the traditional section most commonly mentioned faulty scientific information such as pseudoscience or non-credible research, which was emphasized in the first chapter of the required text-book for both sections. Our results show students who were not engaged in activities about ideological awareness in biology had fewer notions of how society impacts science at the end of the semester. These findings highlight the importance of intentionally teaching students the bidirectional impacts of science and society. 

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4. Developing and Integrated Environmental Engineering Curriculum

   Woolard, C. ; Kirkland, C. ; Plymesser, K. ; Phillips, A. ; Gallagher, S. ; Miley, M. ; Intemann, K. ; Lauchnor, E. ; Schell, W. ( August 2022 , 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Many of the National Academy of Engineering’s grand challenges are related to environmental engineering. There is broad recognition that these challenges will require environmental engineers to integrate concepts from the natural and physical sciences, social sciences, business, and communications to find solutions at the individual, company, community, national and global levels. Montana State University is in the process of revolutionizing the curriculum and culture of its environmental engineering program to prepare and inspire a new generation of engineers through a project sponsored by the Revolutionizing Engineering Departments program at the National Science Foundation. At the core of the approach is transformation of the hierarchical, topic-focused course structure into a model of team taught, integrated, and project-based learning courses grouped around the key knowledge threads of systems thinking, professionalism, and sustainability. Multi-disciplinary faculty developed specific and detailed program outcomes after review of ABET program outcomes; the Fundamentals of Engineering exam; Body of Knowledge documents from the American Academy of Environmental Engineers (AAEE), the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the American Society for Engineering Management (ASEM); the Engineering for One Planet report sponsored by the Lemelson Foundation; and the KEEN Framework on the Entrepreneurial Mindset. The resulting outcomes were organized into competency strands and competency domains. Currently, outcomes spanning the spectrum of content are being crafted into integrated and project-based courses in each year of the undergraduate curriculum. This paper reviews the lessons learned from the process of developing knowledge threads, competency strands and domains, and specific program outcomes with a multidisciplinary group of faculty, as well as the challenges of developing integrated and project-based courses within an established undergraduate curriculum. 

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5. Incubators: Building community networks and developing open educational resources to integrate bioinformatics into life science education

   https://doi.org/10.1002/bmb.21387  

   Ryder, Elizabeth F. ; Morgan, William R. ; Sierk, Michael ; Donovan, Samuel S. ; Robertson, Sabrina D. ; Orndorf, Hayley C. ; Rosenwald, Anne G. ; Triplett, Eric W. ; Dinsdale, Elizabeth ; Pauley, Mark A. ; et al ( June 2020 , Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education)

   While it is essential for life science students to be trained in modern techniques and approaches, rapidly developing, interdisciplinary fields such as bioinformatics present distinct challenges to undergraduate educators. In particular, many educators lack training in new fields, and high‐quality teaching and learning materials may be sparse. To address this challenge with respect to bioinformatics, the Network for the Integration of Bioinformatics into Life Science Education (NIBLSE), in partnership with Quantitative Undergraduate Biology Education and Synthesis (QUBES), developed incubators, a novel collaborative process for the development of open educational resources (OER). Incubators are short‐term, online communities that refine unpublished teaching lessons into more polished and widely usable learning resources. The resulting products are published and made freely available in the NIBLSE Resource Collection, providing recognition of scholarly work by incubator participants. In addition to producing accessible, high‐quality resources, incubators also provide opportunities for faculty development. Because participants are intentionally chosen to represent a range of expertise in bioinformatics and pedagogy, incubators also build professional connections among educators with diverse backgrounds and perspectives and promote the discussion of practical issues involved in deploying a resource in the classroom. Here we describe the incubator process and provide examples of beneficial outcomes. Our experience indicates that incubators are a low cost, short‐term, flexible method for the development of OERs and professional community that could be adapted to a variety of disciplinary and pedagogical contexts.

    

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