This authentic research experience lesson teaches the core concept of systems and the competencies of quantitative reasoning, communication, and the ability to apply science. The research is student driven, the results are unknown, and the students engage in an iterative process to gather data, collaborating with classmates.  It is designed for first-year biology majors, in a class size of 15-30 students who can work in groups of three.  Students will learn to properly design an experiment, work as teams, analyze data, evaluate conclusions, and communicate findings to others. Additionally, this lesson also incorporates self-reflection and peer assessment when students produce a poster as a summative assessment. Over a five–week period, students will explore how an abiotic factor affects growth, reproduction, and survival of Daphnia.  Students are asked to compare their results to published literature. By the end, students should have a better understanding of science as an ongoing process where results are being updated and furthering the state of knowledge.

Beginning undergraduate students in biology need basic laboratory, data analysis, and science process skills to pursue more complex questions in course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs). To this end, we designed an introductory lesson that helps students learn to use common laboratory equipment such as analytical balances and micropipettes, analyze and present data in Google and Microsoft spreadsheet software, and perform simple descriptive and inferential statistics for hypothesis testing. In this lesson, students first learn to use micropipettes by pipetting specific volumes of water correctly and incorrectly. After determining the masses of the water samples pipetted, students enter the data into a shared Google spreadsheet and then use statistics to test a null hypothesis; ultimately, they determine if there is a statistically significant difference between the mass of water pipetted correctly versus incorrectly. Together, these activities introduce students to important data analysis and science process skills while also orienting them to basic laboratory equipment.

A challenge in introductory biology laboratory courses is to provide students with authentic, engaging research opportunities that allow them to take ownership of their experiments. We present a nine-week introductory biology module that allows students to engage with the process of science, gain experience with various laboratory techniques, and communicate their results to a peer audience. These modules use the inexpensive and accessible invertebrate model of the brine shrimp Artemia, which has many applications from aquaculture to ecology to behavior. Students explore known taxis behaviors in the larval (or “naupliar/nauplii”) stages of these brine shrimp before designing their own experiments, collecting and analyzing data, presenting their results orally, and redesigning their experiments based on peer and instructor feedback. This LessonPlus article highlights the exploration of known taxis behaviors and the scaffolding for having students design their own experiments. We originally designed this module to be highly flexible and used it to teach students both remotely and in-person during the early years of the pandemic. We have since found it to be easily adaptable in terms of timing, materials used, and learning modality. Most importantly, we have observed a number of positive outcomes related to student engagement and proficiency, including increased quality of summative assessments.

Primary Image: Artemia nauplius. A scientific illustration of the nauplius stage of Artemia sp. used in these experiments to study taxis behaviors. ©2024 Liesl V. McCormick.

activities to explore pollination

The purpose of this experiential lesson is to teach introductory to mid-level undergraduate students how to make detailed hydrologic field observations into a conceptual model using a painting medium. Students should have prior knowledge about the hydrologic cycle and the hydrologic budget. Part I is the field component where students make detailed observations about key processes of the hydrologic cycle near a river while canoeing, kayaking, or hiking. Part II is an outdoor art-lab lesson where students explore the intersection of science and art, are introduced to conceptual models, and take their observations and sketches from Part I and create a painting to explore one of five key hydrologic cycle processes. Part III is a post-lesson written assignment for students to reflect on their experience demonstrating their knowledge about the hydrologic cycle in relation to the local hydrology. Equipment needed include a field notebook, paints, a canvas, and handouts. This lesson would be well-suited to an introductory earth science, hydrology, or hydrogeology course and can be helpful when introducing the concept of scientific models.

Growing calls in science education reform have emphasized wide-scale engagement of first-year undergraduate students in authentic research experiences; however, large course enrollments, inadequate student experience, limited resources and departmental inertia often create obstacles to reaching this goal. To help overcome these obstacles, the Department of Biology at James Madison University (JMU) has developed a cost-effective, scalable, and transferable semester-long (14-week) course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) designed for large enrollment introductory biology labs. In this series of labs, first-year students use DNA barcoding to engage in authentic research practices drawn from the fields of ecology, molecular biology, and bioinformatics. These labs enable students to identify local species of plants, fungi, and invertebrates using student-generated DNA barcode sequences, which are then shared through a public database. Since their implementation at JMU in 2016, students in these labs have created and shared over 1,500 unique DNA barcode sequences and documented over 300 local species of plants, fungi, and invertebrates. These data are being used in an ongoing project comparing the biodiversity of forest edge versus forest interior habitats, but the labs are adaptable to almost any habitat or taxonomic group. In this article, we provide detailed descriptions of the content, logistics, and implementation of this 14-week series of labs. To our knowledge, this is among the largest-enrollment CUREs being offered to first-year undergraduates in the United States, and we hope that it can be useful to other institutions interested in documenting biodiversity and engaging introductory biology students in authentic research.

Educational games are one active and effective way of engaging students with material while also providing additional motivation to tackle challenging concepts. A particularly popular game concept is the escape room, where students need to work in groups to solve a series of puzzles to prevent disaster from occurring in an imaginary universe, all within a specified amount of time. This paper presents a general guide to constructing an escape room for undergraduate classrooms. Unlike many recently published educational escape rooms, this template does not use any laboratory-based components, making it widely applicable to any class and any level, although it will be most easily adapted to classes that do include analytical components. The puzzles in the game escalate from remembering and understanding concepts to applying and evaluating techniques and data. Unlike many other games and puzzles, an escape room does not reveal the final answers until the allocated time is up, which forces students to work through challenging questions and find solutions within their group to advance in the game. The game provides students many instances for formative assessment and encourages helpful discussions surrounding misconceptions and core course content while they escalate through the challenges.

In this lesson students embark upon a journey through the many ways we come to know a watershed, with foci on its physical geography and our embodied perceptions. This enables students to formulate a holistic understanding of the value of watersheds, situating any future discipline-specific foci within a broad understanding of what watersheds mean to humanity. Required site conditions are simply the bank of any river or stream channel. Equipment needs are minimal. Written data is collected in notebooks. The “data” will address questions of geography and philosophy, such as “what are the physical components of a watershed?” and “what are the roles of humanity in regard to rivers?” This lesson has broad applicability across different regions. It complements quantitative scientific river-based field lessons by actively grounding students’ understanding of humanity’s inherent subjectivity in their perceptions of rivers. The intent of this lesson is to engage with subjectivity, connecting students with the riverine place they are in through an exploration of their perceptions and feelings, ultimately deepening their relationships with rivers and places.

This lesson introduces students to field methods and theoretical concepts regarding the factors that shape river environments and ecosystems. Introductory material is followed by instruction in the Wolman Pebble Count and the Equation of Entrainment.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge is based on deep understanding of systems from observations made over hundreds to thousands of years. This resource connects Traditional Ecological Knowledge to modern conservation through media and primary literature interpretation. The adaptation of this research aims to link the material to the ecological concept of the intermediate disturbance hypothesis and to highlight ecologists whose careers have focused on the concept.

This series of self-paced tutorials show how to analyze data using a spreadsheet program.

Genome Solver began as a way to teach undergraduate faculty some basic skills in bioinformatics; no coding or scripting is required. Lesson II introduces the principal databases for microbial genomics.

The "Introduction to BLAST using Human Leptin" exercise aims to introduce students to the use of the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) to identify related sequences and compare similarity between them.

The students will practice identifying the appropriate basic statistical tests when given a scenario and learn how to run and interpret those statistical tests in R.

This is an introduction to bioinformatics using hemoglobin as an example. The worksheets introduce students to resources to explore the DNA, RNA and polypeptide linear structure with a brief introduction to the quaternary structure of hemoglobin.

Biomolecular structure and function is emphasized as a core concept in a variety of community determined educational standards for biology and chemistry. Most curricula introduce students to the building blocks and principles of biomolecular structures, in introductory chapters of biology, biochemistry, cell biology, and chemistry courses, but very few engage students in actively visualizing and exploring biomolecular structures throughout the course. Conversations with faculty teaching introductory courses, and/or developing and piloting molecular case studies, helped uncover the need for new resources, and professional development to support introduction of biomolecular exploration. To address this need, a group of faculty participating in a Faculty Mentoring Network in Spring 2022, gathered together resources and lessons that they had independently developed and collaboratively developed additional ones. An overview of the lessons will be presented here. Interested users are invited to pilot the lessons in Fall 2022.

This resource promotes inclusive learning by using all free platforms to extend the central dogma to an applied experience. Genomics is focused on with literature reviews that are performed to identify genes implicated in a clinical condition. Transcriptomics with data mining of RNAseq acquisition is followed by protein sequence acquisition and modeling. Teaching and learning of communication in the process of science is the final focus.