National educational initiatives require significant investments of effort and time from stakeholders. Although stakeholders envision an impact, it can be difficult to measure progress toward goals on a national scale. Here, we propose a novel approach to detect change and growth in teaching practices over time in light of hypotheses outlined in the 2011, 2015, and 2018 Vision and Change (V&C) in Undergraduate Biology Education reports. Using a scoping review methodology, we analyzed trends in curricular and pedagogical practices within 650 lesson plans published over a two-decade timespan. We detected changes after V&C report publication along several variables, including a four-fold increase in publication rate, increased prominence of seven out of 11 concepts and competencies, and use of student-centered teaching and assessment practices such as the inclusion of learning goals and active learning in lesson plans. These results help the life science education community understand the current state of the field and identify growth opportunities. A similar approach can be used by other disciplines to measure educational transformations associated with national reports.
To science instructors, it may seem obvious that understanding cell theory is essential for understanding how some diseases spread and can be treated. For students, these connections are often unclear at best. For some students, this knowledge might help propel their interest in life science and keep them motivated to engage and persist even when the content is difficult. Infusing purpose and relevance into the classroom is more than the instructor just giving an example from time to time. Our teaching guide describes the evidence for the positive impact of teaching strategies that promote purpose and relevance into introductory science classrooms. We review the various motivational theories that underlie why purpose and relevance matter and describe evidence-based strategies for engaging students in the deliberate process of drawing connections, finding and affirming value, and creating a purpose-filled science classroom culture.
At the Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA) 2024 annual meeting and trainee symposium, an Innovations in Education workshop aimed to explore the skills necessary to design learning objectives, optimize artificial intelligence (AI) use in education, and employ interactive teaching methods. Learning objectives are crucial for structuring educational programs and enhancing learner engagement and performance. Although incorporating AI into education promises untapped potential, it requires careful implementation to avoid introducing inaccuracies and biases. Effective teaching techniques, such as the Know-Feel-Do principle, emphasize the importance of understanding audience needs, creating engaging content, and fostering interactive learning environments. With the use of real-world examples in the rheumatology field, the workshop illustrated the diversity and impact of innovative educational practices that can help educators deliver an outstanding learning experience. This paper will cover the key points from this workshop.
This paper overviews a quasi-experimental approach, the Regression Discontinuity (RD) design, as a viable tool to estimate the effects of classroom interventions in discipline-based education research (DBER). Classroom interventions have been widely used in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instruction to improve student outcomes and promote educational equity. Yet two common approaches to access the impacts of these interventions on student outcomes, randomized control trials and covariate adjustment models, may not be an optimal choice when (1) it is not feasible or ethical to conduct randomized experiments, and (2) the instructor does not acquire sufficient student background characteristics to account for nonrandom assignments of students to the intervention. Fortunately, the RD designs exploit a predetermined intervention threshold and, under testable assumptions, can estimate the impact of an intervention by comparing students who narrowly qualified for the intervention to students who narrowly did not. Utilizing an extended example data from a real-world classroom intervention, we demonstrate why and how to perform RD analysis with classroom intervention data. We also provide step-by-step R Markdown (https://github.com/TheobaldLab/RegressionDiscontinuity.git) to encourage the implementation of the RD design in DBER.
While scientific environments have been described as unwelcoming to the LGBTQ+ community, and fields such as physics have systematically documented these challenges, the climate in biology-specific workplaces has not exclusively been assessed. We conducted the largest survey to date of LGBTQ+ biologists to examine how their sense of belonging and perception of climate in the biology workplace and professional societies compare to that of their straight and cis peers. In 2023, we surveyed 1419 biologists across five professional societies, with 486 identifying as LGBTQ+. Trans and gender non-conforming (TGNC) biologists reported lower belonging and morale within the workplace, professional societies, and the biology community compared with cis, straight biologists. They also reported being less comfortable with the climate of various professional biology environments. While LGBTQ+ biologists report that their workplaces are moderately inclusive, over 20% of all LGBTQ+ biologists and nearly 40% of TGNC biologists experience exclusionary behavior at work. This landmark survey provides the first comprehensive analysis of the LGBTQ+ climate in biology, revealing specific challenges faced by TGNC scientists.
Participatory sciences (any science that depends on the knowledge or involvement of the public) are increasingly being included in undergraduate courses. Although they have most often been integrated into undergraduate courses to engage students, we expand ideas of how these approaches can be used to promote student learning. First, we explore three theoretical frameworks, culturally sustaining pedagogy, control value theory, and the ICAP (Interactive, Constructive, Active, Passive) framework, that help explain why incorporating participatory science is an effective classroom practice at disrupting opportunity hoarding (a fourth framework). These theories focus on motivating learning, illustrating the power of participatory sciences as a mechanism of inclusive science, and attuning pedagogical practices specifically to participatory science curricula. Second, we use these theories to design a model with three orthogonal axes: science agency, breadth of interaction within classes and with external communities, and social justice. This model is designed to be aspirational for instructors to more fully capture how participatory sciences can be used in higher education to maximize instructional goals. We hope to promote reflection among instructors and provide ideas for how they can implement participatory science to expose students to research and use evidence-based reasoning to develop solutions for local and global problems.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) students continue to face violence, exclusion, and barriers at school, including in STEM education. A key underexamined factor in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts is the content of the life science curriculum, which is uniquely positioned to reinforce or refute bioessentialist, binary, and heteronormative biases. Outdated science curricula not only conflict with current scientific evidence but can also perpetuate beliefs that contribute to sexism and LGBTQIA+ marginalization. To address this, we designed four gender and sexual diversity (GSD)-inclusive biology activities, aligned with NGSS standards, and informed by inclusive curriculum frameworks. Using a mixed-methods approach, we studied 127 high school students who participated in two or more inclusive biology activities. Surveys conducted before and after implementation showed significant reductions in essential, binary beliefs about sex and gender, and increases in affirming attitudes toward sex and gender diversity. Interviews conducted after implementation further revealed differences between LGBTQIA+ and straight students' conceptualizations of biological sex. Our findings demonstrate that even brief curriculum interventions can shift student attitudes, although we hope future studies will explore the impact of sustained interventions. Updating life science instruction is essential for educational equity and scientific accuracy.
Undergraduate research programs (URPs) play an important role in preparing the next cohort of professionals in the health research workforce. URPs also provide continuity and structure during times of stress and uncertainty, like the COVID-19 pandemic and racial reckoning of 2020. This mixed-methods study describes the relationships between student stressors and educational experiences while examining program factors that might have mitigated negative consequences. Participants of an NIH-funded URP, BUILD (Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity), aimed to increase the number of students from underrepresented backgrounds in biomedical and behavioral sciences Ph.D. programs and research careers (N = 45), were surveyed in September 2020 and again in May 2021 to understand their personal, programmatic, and educational-related concerns during the twin pandemic of COVID-19 and racial injustice. Concurrent and longitudinal correlational relationships as well as qualitative data were examined to describe trainee experiences and inform best practices in supporting academic pursuits and well-being. In fall 2020, students reported high levels of mental health and academic concerns. Additionally, there was a wide spectrum of personal needs concerns, and of emotional impacts of anti-Black racism on students. High levels of these concerns and impacts of racial injustice were related to poorer personal resource management and programmatic working relationships, as well as educational and graduation impacts after students completed a virtual academic year. Students continued to feel emotionally and academically impacted by both anti-Asian and anti-Black racism, and a majority also indicated heightened awareness and engagement with racial injustice topics. Finally, results showed that negative early experiences were related to poorer end-of-the-year educational experiences, and in some cases, these relationships were significant only for students with a weaker sense of belonging, resource management skills, or working relationships. Results supported the URPs' importance of developing belongingness, strong working relationships, and personal management skills, which improved students' research and academic success, particularly for those with personal, mental health, and/or academic needs or concerns. Building a network of support and these skill sets as undergraduates may have long-reaching effects to help trainees endure and flourish when faced with future challenges.
Active learning can enhance student outcomes in STEM higher education, but its effectiveness varies with implementation. A key contributor to this variation is the pedagogical knowledge held by instructors. However, little is known about instructors' pedagogical knowledge of how people learn, how these ideas develop over time, and how knowledge development influences active-learning implementation. This longitudinal qualitative study examined variation, development, and instructional implications of pedagogical knowledge among 11 early-career undergraduate life sciences instructors in the context of their active-learning instruction. We conducted semistructured interviews, including stimulated recall, capturing pedagogical knowledge used to plan, implement, and reflect on a lesson, repeating this process across multiple semesters. We used qualitative content analysis and an analytical framework to identify distinct pedagogical ideas about how people learn used by instructors and their alignment with passive, active, and generative cognitive engagement in the ICAP framework. Longitudinal comparisons revealed that participants did not consistently develop ideas aligned with generative cognitive engagement, indicating that teaching experience is necessary but insufficient to foster development of crucial pedagogical knowledge for effective active learning. Case studies illustrated how knowledge development can influence nuances of active-learning design and implementation. We discuss potential mechanisms of knowledge development and instructional implications.
Biochemistry is fundamental to medical education; however, traditional teaching may limit clinical integration and long-term retention. Although clinical simulation has emerged as a strategy to promote active and contextualized learning, its effectiveness in biochemistry teaching remains limited. This study evaluated the impact of clinical simulation on cognitive knowledge, technical skills, and communication among first-semester medical students compared with traditional practical instruction. A mixed-methods, quasi-experimental design was used with 404 students from the Central University of Ecuador, allocated to a simulation group (n = 205) or control group (n = 199). Both groups received identical theoretical instruction. Outcomes were assessed at baseline and post-intervention in four domains: theoretical knowledge, clinical interpretation, technical skills, and communication. Student satisfaction and perceptions were evaluated using surveys and qualitative analysis. Both groups improved after sessions; however, the simulation group demonstrated significantly greater gains across all domains (theoretical knowledge, clinical interpretation, technical skills, and communication). Students in the simulation-based group also achieved higher success rates in blood-sampling procedures, completed tasks in less time, and reported more positive emotions, reduced anxiety, increased confidence, and greater satisfaction. Simulation-based education appears to be an effective and feasible approach to enhance knowledge, technical, communication skills, and student motivation in medical biochemistry teaching.
Papaya is a major tropical fruit crop with notable nutritional and economic value, yet its genetic improvement through modern breeding technologies faces substantial challenges. The traditional tissue culture process is both labor-intensive and time-consuming, causing gene-editing advancements in papaya to lag behind those in other crops. To overcome these obstacles, we developed a tissue culture-independent hairy root system in papaya, which enables efficient gene editing and significantly enhances the application and development of editing tools. This innovative platform allows for the pre-assessment of editing efficiency and supports the establishment of adenine base editor (ABE) and cytosine base editor (CBE) tools in papaya, thereby mitigating the high failure costs associated with the lengthy cycle of conventional genetic transformation. Utilizing this system, we pre-tested sgRNA activity and achieved high editing efficiency of CpWIP3 during stable transformation. Additionally, through promoter screening, we successfully developed ABE and CBE tools, marking the first precise single-nucleotide editing system in papaya. This gene-editing system provides a crucial platform for advancing functional genomics and accelerating precision breeding in papaya.
Academic advising plays a major role in shaping undergraduate life sciences students' experiences through college. However, despite the critical nature of advising, there have been relatively few studies examining students' experiences with advising and how these experiences may influence their academic journeys. Here, we investigate first-generation college students' experiences with academic advising in biology and throughout STEM. Through the lens of community cultural wealth, we found several themes such as balancing independence and pressures to succeed, identity as a source for empowerment and motivation, wanting reassurance and support from advisors, as well as negative outcomes during interactions with advisors. We also provide recommendations from student participants on how to improve academic advising. This research adds to the limited, but growing, body of literature on academic advising broadly, and within biology and other STEM fields specifically.
Community college transfer students have varied experiences that may (dis)engage them with science over their lifespan. Through the lens of science identity and boundary experiences, we completed three interviews, each with five transfer students majoring in biology at a four-year university. Students reflected on their entire lives and imparted stories about formal and informal experiences that impacted their (dis)engagement with science and explained their pathway in science. We focus on the boundary experiences students described and how these may or may not support science identity production. We found that boundary experiences vary by context and that the actions and words of individuals who are a part of the story play a role in the consequences of the boundary experience. We noted that different boundary experiences have different impacts on the trajectory of a student and that their agency influences possible trajectories. The stories imparted articulate not only barriers, but the resources that uplifted them in their lifetime. This provides insight into the varied science experiences that community college transfer students encounter and decisions that students make that educators can leverage. The constant negotiations with new experiences allowed for a continuous science identity production that resulted in persistence, even with interruptions.
Phylogenetics is an essential component of science literacy, but research demonstrates the challenges of interpreting evolutionary trees. While a variety of classroom interventions have been shown effective in this field, the potential of educational games is underexplored. We investigate the efficacy of an escape-style game for teaching tree-thinking skills. VENOMventure immerses English- and Spanish-speaking families with kids ages 8 years and up in a biomedical mystery during a 30-45-min game. Participants (N = 466) at two natural history museums, one urban library, and one rural library played VENOMventure and took part in research that assessed learning through pre-test, post-test, and 4-week follow-up test. Players of all ages, from rural and urban settings, demonstrated significant learning gains, which persisted for at least 4 weeks. Groups with child-led or balanced puzzle-solving styles showed larger overall learning gains than groups with adult-led play. Furthermore, the experience was perceived as fun and memorable, and led to extended interactions with the science concepts from the game. This research provides insight into the variety of interventions that support phylogenetics learning and represents a rare case in which an escape-style game purported to be educational has generated robust evidence supporting that claim.
Impostor phenomenon is a pervasive experience amongst doctoral students with negative consequences on mental health and persistence in graduate school. While the psychological consequences of impostor phenomenon are well known, there are open questions about how structures in graduate education (e.g., policies and practices) inform doctoral students' experience with impostor phenomenon. In this study, we interviewed 20 biology doctoral students at two R1 institutions about their experiences with impostor phenomenon during graduate school. We used an abductive qualitative content analysis approach to identify the structures that contributed to their impostor feelings and understand how these structures may lead to impostorism. In our analysis of the interviews, we applied the framework of institutionalism to identify structures and associated themes that informed the participants' experiences with impostor phenomenon. The themes associated with the structures of graduate education that contributed to participants to feel like impostors included: 1) structures that act as high-stakes gatekeeping mechanisms; 2) structures that rely on knowledge of the hidden curriculum; and 3) structures that facilitate comparative social situations. The results of our study suggest that structures and the underlying characteristics are important when considering graduate students' experiences with impostor phenomenon.
As the number of transfer students from community colleges increases in many 4-yr institutions, the development of transfer-specific programming has become a priority. Transfer students often do not have the same opportunities or time to form communities with students or mentorship experiences with faculty. Although they see the value of research and forming a community, they feel like they must take a heavy science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) load to graduate on time (Hanaeuer DI, Graham MJ, Jacobs-Sera D, Garlena RA, Russell DA, Sivanathan V, Asai DJ, Hatfull GF. CBE Life Sci Educ 21: ar38, 2022). In addition, developing a first-semester curriculum for transfer students can be difficult due to the wide range of coursework they bring. Course-based research experiences (CUREs) are an opportunity to engage transfer students in their first semester, forming an important part of their introduction to an often larger university. This allows them to form a cohort and interact with faculty in a small lab setting and assures a mechanism for course credit toward graduation. Training faculty to develop or revise lab courses through workshops that emphasize the value of CUREs has led us to increase student-faculty and faculty-faculty interactions while fostering student success. Several faculty have provided brief overviews of research questions that can be used to form the basis of a CURE. One example from our neurobiology faculty is presented here. Expanding these CURE options and the number of faculty able to teach these courses has increased our transfer students' sense of community.NEW & NOTEWORTHY As the transfer student population increases at 4-yr universities, it is critical to develop a pathway for them to access relevant courses, form a community, and have research opportunities from their first semester. Designing course-based research experiences (CUREs) specifically for this student population will allow transfer students to transition with their cohort into their science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses. This article describes how to train faculty through workshops and expand CURE options at a large public university.
Women of Color (WOC) remain underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) graduate education due to a wide range of entrenched structural, cultural, and institutional barriers. Drawing on Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) and Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) framework, this study examines how aspirational, social-navigational, and resistant capital shape WOC's STEM graduate aspirations. We apply multinomial logistic regression to a longitudinal data from 1353 senior WOC graduating with STEM bachelor's degrees to identify factors predicting their likelihood of pursuing a STEM or non-STEM graduate degree, relative to having no graduate aspirations. Results indicate that WOC who received frequent faculty mentorship and had high college involvement scores reported significantly greater likelihoods of pursuing a STEM graduate degree, while WOC who had a strong commitment to community leadership and advocacy for social change demonstrated a lower likelihood of pursuing a STEM graduate degree. The study highlights the need for inclusive mentorship and institutional policies that better support, recognize, and cultivate the diverse cultural wealth of WOC students as they navigate their paths through college and beyond.
Interacting with others is an important aspect of life. Especially in education, collaborations can help students learn. Unfortunately, there are often systemic barriers of science being perceived as individualistic, which may impact student success in science. Therefore, this study investigated how college students' (n = 672) social experiences (including learning benefits from peer ideas, LBP) in an introductory biology laboratory course was related to their science motivation and performance. Initial correlational analysis showed positive associations amongst students' social experiences, science motivation, and course performance. Regression analysis demonstrated a change in LBP and interaction of this with first-generation student (FGS) status, were important predictors of final science motivation. Science motivation, in turn, was able to predict student performance in the course. Interestingly, although science motivation was predictive of performance for all students, FGS status interacted with science motivation to predict performance only in the laboratory that featured a more collaborative curriculum. Results suggest that experiencing LBP may impact all students' science motivation and through this course performance. Yet these relationships may be more critical for FGS in collaborative classroom environments. Implications for optimizing LBP in introductory life science courses will be explored.
The small interfering RNA (siRNA) pathway directs broad-spectrum antiviral defense through RNA silencing so that virulent infection requires efficient suppression of the defense mechanism. Here, we show that strigolactone (SL) hormone signaling promotes antiviral silencing in rice plants by transcriptional activation of RNA-dependent RNA polymerase 1 (RDR1) and RDR6. We demonstrate that protein P3 of the rice grassy stunt virus (RGSV) blocks SL signaling by directly sequestering the receptor DWARF14 from DWARF3. Structural and functional analyses of the P3-DWARF14 complex reveal that the aspartic acid at position 102 (D102) of DWARF14 is essential for the P3 interaction but not for SL perception. Notably, a single D102N substitution of DWARF14, introduced into two rice cultivars by cytosine base editing (CBE) confers resistance against RGSV by blocking viral suppression of SL signaling-dependent antiviral silencing. Our findings establish a transgene-free strategy for engineering disease resistance by precise genome editing of the SL receptor to escape pathogen suppression of the endogenous defense pathway.
There is compelling evidence that test anxiety-related performance is contributing to documented trends in attrition in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines. While some anxiety-mitigation interventions have yielded promising results, these interventions have not been replicated broadly, specifically at different institution types. In the current research, we (a) examine how test anxiety relates to performance in STEM courses, by student characteristics and institution type; and (b) test, via replication, a cognitive reappraisal intervention across 12 courses at seven higher education institutions. We used a pre- and postintervention survey to assess test anxiety and combined these data with course performance and experimental condition: intervention or placebo. We confirm that test anxiety is negatively predictive of performance. We also note that Black students at predominantly white institutions have significantly higher test anxiety than their counterparts at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. However, the intervention failed to impact self-reported test anxiety or student performance. The work we describe here is characterized by several contributions to our growing understanding of test anxiety, performance, and student attrition in STEM.