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    Thinking deeply about quantitative analysis: Building a Biologist's Toolkit
    Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education encouraged faculty to focus on core concepts and competencies in undergraduate curriculum. We created a sophomore-level course, Biologists' Toolkit, to focus on the competencies of...
    Lesson
    1769

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    449

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    Why do Some People Inherit a Predisposition to Cancer? A small group activity on cancer genetics
    Before undergraduate students take a genetics course they generally know cancer has a genetic basis and involves the proliferation of cells; however, many are uncertain about why only a subset of people have a predisposition to cancer and how that...
    Lesson
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    494

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    Using Pathway Maps to Link Concepts, Peer Review, Primary Literature Searches and Data Assessment in Large Enrollment Classes: An example from teaching ecosystem ecology
    As with many other complex topics, teaching ecosystem ecology can be particularly difficult in terms of helping students understand the relationships between the various component parts. We addressed this challenge in a general ecology course by...
    Lesson
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    17

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    Defining Life: Exploring Creativity, Scientific Discovery, and Biology Core Concepts in a Disciplinary First-Year Seminar
    This unit, Defining Life, engages students in thinking like scientists, applying creativity to science, and learning biology core concepts as they explore the defining characteristics of life. This unit provides an example of a curriculum designed...
    Lesson
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    184

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    Advancing Global Learning Through a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Module on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs)
    An increasingly interconnected world presents opportunities for globally relevant curricula in the classroom. Implementing collaborative online international learning (COIL) modules within medium-sized courses can take advantage of this...
    Lesson
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    209

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    Diversifying and Humanizing Scientist Role Models Through Interviews and Constructing Slide Decks on Researchers’ Research and Life Experiences
    To maintain recruitment and retention, biology teachers face the challenge of finding relatable role models for their students. Our ever-increasing scientific knowledge has been facilitated by people from many different backgrounds, identities,...
    Teaching Tools and Strategies
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    Undergraduates Learn Evolution Through Teaching Kindergartners About Blind Mexican Cavefish
    The development and implementation of a scientific outreach activity comes with a number of challenges. A successful outreach event must match the sophistication of content to the audience, be engaging, expand the knowledge base for participants,...
    Lesson
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    149

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    Using Musical Instruments to Model Negative Feedback in the Hypothalamo-Pituitary-Target Gland Axes
    Homeostasis and negative feedback are crucial, yet difficult, concepts for undergraduates, particularly in the context of the hypothalamo-pituitary axes. This interactive activity was designed to (1) reveal how negative feedback can restore...
    Lesson
    2678

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    391

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    Distances in the Universe: An Inquiry Lab Sequence Taught in West Africa and North America
    Astronomy evokes deep curiosity for many people, making it a beautiful topic for supporting students to learn scientific practices and develop as scientists. We present an inquiry-based lab sequence about distances in the Universe, which we have...

    Courses: AstronomyAstronomy

    Lesson
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    273

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    Debating Conservation: Developing Critical Thinking Skills in Introductory Biology Classes
    Role-playing activities in the classroom promote students’ critical thinking, research, and communication skills. We present an activity where students debate a current controversy in conservation. In our case study, students debate the...
    Lesson
    3692

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    403

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    Is Earth Currently Undergoing a Sixth Mass Extinction?
    The five Phanerozoic mass extinctions were central in shaping biodiversity on Earth today. Due to increasing biodiversity losses, there is debate about whether we are currently undergoing a sixth mass extinction. To help students better understand...
    Lesson
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    430

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    A Classroom Intervention to Reduce Confirmation Bias
    STEM students are often unable to recognize cognitive bias in their own disciplines, and simply describing cognitive bias to students has shown to be insufficient to improve critical thinking. However, habitual metacognitive techniques show...
    Lesson
    2752

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    509

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    2

    comments

    A Fun Introductory Command Line Lesson: Next Generation Sequencing Quality Analysis with Emoji!
    Radical innovations in DNA sequencing technology over the past decade have created an increased need for computational bioinformatics analyses in the 21st century STEM workforce. Recent evidence however demonstrates that there are significant...

    Courses: BioinformaticsBioinformatics

    Lesson
    1441

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    728

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    Data Analysis Recitation Activities Support Better Understanding in SEA-PHAGES CURE
    Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are widely known to improve student learning outcomes in the sciences. Undergraduate students have a particularly difficult time interpreting the scientific data that they generate in these...
    Lesson
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    520

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    Knowing your own: A classroom case study using the scientific method to investigate how birds learn to recognize their offspring
    Understanding the scientific method provides students with a necessary foundation for careers in science-related fields. Moreover, students can apply scientific inquiry skills in many aspects of their daily lives and decision making. Thus, the...
    Review
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    201

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    Workshop Report: Summer 2020 Virtual CRISPR in the Classroom
    As innovations and developments in genome editing technologies using CRISPR-Cas systems progress, the need to disseminate relevant knowledge and build skills among the next generation of young scientists in undergraduate classrooms is vital. Our...
    Teaching Tools and Strategies
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    389

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    Drawing flowcharts of lab protocols helps students prepare for biology labs
    With the publishing of the Vision and Change report, we know it is best practice to include authentic research experiences in our undergraduate science lab classes. One big challenge in teaching so-called "wet lab" classes is figuring...
    Essay
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    113

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    Online Adaptation to "Gotcha! Which fly trap is the best? An introduction to experimental data collection and analysis"
    We present here a simple and engaging experiment capitalizing on the universal need to rid our homes of fruit flies to teach experimental design and analysis. In an earlier paper, we described an experiment in which students learn the scientific...
    Lesson
    1282

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    271

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    Priority Setting in Public Health: A lesson in ethics and hard choices
    Undergraduate life sciences majors, many of whom aspire to work in healthcare and health research, can benefit from early exposure to ethical issues that they may encounter in these careers. This lesson plan introduces students to the tensions...
    Essay
    830

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    118

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    Resources for Assessing Educational Interventions in Biology at the Collegiate Level
    Most scientific research is judged based on the quality of controlled experiments and carefully analyzed results. In addition, proper levels of regulation in terms of biosafety and animal usage are a routine part of the scientific research process...