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1. A Comparison of Online and In-Person Evolution Instruction That Includes Religious Cultural Competence

   https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.00067-22  

   Bowen, Chloe D. ; Summersill, Alexa R. ; Jensen, Jamie L. ; Brownell, Sara E. ; Barnes, M. Elizabeth ( July 2022 , Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education)

   Anderson, Deborah K. (Ed.)

   ABSTRACT Evolution is one of the most important concepts in biology, but it is rejected by a substantial percentage of religious students due to a perceived conflict with their religious beliefs. The use of religious cultural competence in evolution education (ReCCEE) has been shown to effectively increase evolution acceptance among religious students during in-person instruction, but there is no research that we know of that indicates the effectiveness of these practices during online instruction. In this study, we explored the efficacy of online culturally competent practices for religious students on students’ evolution understanding, evolution acceptance, and comfort learning evolution at a religious university. Before and after evolution instruction, we surveyed 178 students in online introductory biology courses and compared these student outcomes to 201 students in the same instructor’s in-person introductory biology courses. We found that evolution acceptance and understanding increased in online classes with culturally competent practices, and these gains were similar to those observed in the in-person courses. Despite these similarities, we found that students were more comfortable learning evolution in person than online, but this difference was small. Our findings suggest that the use of culturally competent practices online can be as effective as their use for in-person instruction for improving students' attitudes toward evolution, but in-person instruction may be more effective for cultivating students’ comfort while learning evolution. 

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2. WIP: Hands-On Statics in the Online “Classroom”

   Davishahl, Eric ; Self, Brian P. ; Fuentes, Mathew Parsons ( July 2021 , 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access)

   null (Ed.)

   Engineering instructors often use physical manipulatives such as foam beams, rolling cylinders, and large representations of axis systems to demonstrate mechanics concepts and help students visualize systems. Additional benefits are possible when manipulatives are in the hands of individual students or small teams of students who can explore concepts at their own pace and focus on their specific points of confusion. Online learning modalities require new strategies to promote spatial visualization and kinesthetic learning. Potential solutions include creating videos of the activities, using CAD models to demonstrate the principles, programming computer simulations, and providing hands-on manipulatives to students for at-home use. This Work-in-Progress paper discusses our experiences with this last strategy in statics courses two western community colleges and a western four-year university where we supplied students with their own hands-on kits. We have previously reported on the successful implementation of a hands-on statics kit consisting of 3D printed components and standard hardware. The kit was originally designed for use by teams of students during class to engage with topics such as vectors, moments, and rigid body equilibrium. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and shift to online instruction, the first author developed a scaled down version of the kit for at-home use by individual students and modified the associated activity worksheets accordingly. For the community college courses, local students picked up their models at the campus bookstore. We also shipped some of the kits to students who were unable to come to campus, including some in other countries. Due to problems with printing and availability of materials, only 18 kits were available for the class of 34 students at the university implementation. Due to this circumstance, students were placed in teams and asked to work together virtually, one student showing the kit to the other student as they worked through the worksheet prompts. One community college instructor took this approach as well for a limited number of international students who did not receive their kits in a timely manner due to shipping problems. Two instructors assigned the hands-on kits as asynchronous learning activities in their respective online courses, with limited guidance on their use. The third used the kits primarily in synchronous online class meetings. We found that students’ reaction to the models varied by pilot site and presume that implementation differences contributed to this variation. In all cases, student feedback was less positive than it has been for face-to-face courses that used the models from which the take home kit was adapted. Our main conclusion is that implementation matters. Doing hands-on learning in an online course requires some fundamental rethinking about how the learning is structured and scaffolded. 

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3. Effects of Remote Teaching in a Crisis on Equity Gaps and the Constructivist Learning Environment in an Introductory Biology Course Series

   https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.v22i1.2293  

   Zuckerman, Austin L. ; Hardesty, Rebecca A. ; Denaro, Kameryn ; Lo, Stanley M. ; Owens, Melinda T. ( April 2021 , Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education)

   null (Ed.)

   ABSTRACT Because of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, higher education institutions had to pivot rapidly to online remote learning. Many educators were concerned that the disparate impact of this crisis would exacerbate inequities in learning outcomes and student learning experiences, especially for students from minoritized backgrounds. We examined course grades and student perceptions of their learning experiences in fall (face-to-face) and spring (fully remote) quarters in an introductory biology course series at a public research university. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found that student course grades increased overall during remote learning, and equity gaps in course grades were mitigated for minoritized students. We hypothesize that instructors may have changed their grading practices to compensate for challenges in remote learning in crisis. However, spring students reported significant decreases in the amount of peer negotiation and social support, critical components of active learning. These findings suggest that remote teaching in crisis may have negatively affected student learning environments in ways that may not have been captured by grading practices. 

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4. Self-regulated spacing in a massive open online course is related to better learning

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-020-0061-1  

   Carvalho, Paulo F. ; Sana, Faria ; Yan, Veronica X. ( March 2020 , npj Science of Learning)

   In this study, we examined students’ natural studying behaviors in massive, open, online course (MOOC) on introductory psychology. We found that, overall, distributing study across multiple sessions—increasing spacing—was related to increased performance on end-of-unit quizzes, even when comparing the same student across different time-points in the course. Moreover, we found important variation on who is more likely to engage in spaced study and benefit from it. Students with higher ability and students who were more likely to complete course activities were more likely to space their study. Spacing benefits, however, were largest for the lower-ability students and for those students who were less likely to complete activities. These results suggest that spaced study might work as a buffer, improving performance for low ability students and those who do not engage in active practices. This study highlights the positive impact of spacing in real-world learning situations, but more importantly, the role of self-regulated learning decisions in shaping the impact of spaced practice.

    

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5. An Online CURE Taught at a Community College During the Pandemic Shows Mixed Results for Development of Research Self-Efficacy and In-class Relationships

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-023-10078-5  

   Dunbar-Wallis, Amy ; Katcher, Jennifer ; Moore, Wendy ; Corwin, Lisa A. ( October 2023 , Journal of Science Education and Technology)

   The Bee the CURE is a novel course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) that engages introductory biology students in DNA barcoding (DNA extraction, amplification, and bioinformatics) in partnership with the Tucson Bee Collaborative and the University of Arizona. The first iteration of this CURE taught at Pima Community College (PCC) occurred during the Fall 2020 semester in which the course was taught online and students focused on bioinformatics. Due to the online format, students were unable to participate directly in the wet-lab components (extraction and amplification) of the course. These were approximated with videos of the instructor performing the tasks. A qualitative case study of this semester built from student interviews found that students were able to form positive relationships with instructors and peer mentors but that the online format of the class posed some challenges to relationship formation. Students reported developing self-efficacy in bioinformatics skills while online lab participation disrupted student’s gaining “hands-on experiences” and seldom led to development of science self-efficacy in wet lab skills. Our findings from a study of a synchronous online CURE allowed us to characterize a context in which online learning posed a challenge and perhaps even a threat to research self-efficacy, especially regarding skill development and self-efficacy in “hands-on” areas, such as wet-bench research skills. Yet optimistically, our study highlights the potential of online community college learning environments to provide mastery experiences in online science contexts (e.g., bioinformatics) and opportunities for relationship building.

    

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