CourseSource: Resources

Teaching Tools and Strategies

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Casting a Wide Net via Case Studies: Educating across the undergraduate to medical school continuum in the biological sciences

This article seeks to help bridge undergraduate and medical educators by describing shared educational goals and strategies, highlighting resources relevant for both groups, and exemplifying shared interests through a demonstration resource. Both...

Courses: Genetics

genetic testingdirect-to-consumer genetic testinginformed consentprenatal screeningsecondary findingswhole genome sequencing

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Furry with a chance of evolution: Exploring genetic drift with tuco-tucos

Genetic drift is an important mechanism of evolution, yet undergraduates often fail to understand how it leads to evolutionary change due in part to its random nature. This lesson plan describes a simulation-based activity that allows students to...

Courses: Evolution

EvolutionGenetic DriftBottle neckFounder effectRandom evolutionary processes

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Fruit Fly Genetics in a Day: A Guided Exploration to Help Many Large Sections of Beginning Students Uncover the Secrets of Sex-linked Inheritance

Moving beyond the basic concepts of autosomal Mendelian inheritance to sex-linkage can be difficult for introductory biology students. Although crosses with Drosophila fruit flies have long been a mainstay of genetics units that teach these...

Courses: Genetics

Mendelian Geneticsfruit fly biologysex-linked inheritance

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A Student-Led Hearing on the Use of HeLa Cells in Research

In this role-playing case study, students will learn about the HeLa cell line and its origins while examining multiple perspectives surrounding the cell line and its uses. The goal of this case study is for students to use guided questions to...

Courses: Cell Biology Science Process Skills

bioethicsscience policycell culturedebateHeLa cellsinformed consentrole playsocial justice issues

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Life Is Just a Game: An Active Learning Activity to Teach Life History Evolution

A novel activity was designed to introduce students to the concepts of natural selection and life history using an active-learning, constructivist format. It consisted of two parts: 1) a brief introduction to the basic mechanism of natural...

Courses: Ecology Ecology Evolution

Evolutionlife historytrade-offsdiversityNatural Selection

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A Muscular Dystrophy Case Study Illustrating the Phenotypic Effects of Mutation

Mutations in genes can lead to a variety of phenotypes, including various human diseases. Students often understand that a particular mutation in a single gene causes a disease phenotype, but it is more challenging to illustrate complex genetic...

Courses: Developmental Biology Genetics

mutationProtein Structureethicscentral dogmahuman disease

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Make It Stick: Teaching Gene Targeting with Ribbons and Fasteners

Manipulating gene expression is a commonly used tool to study the effect of a single gene or the hierarchy of gene networks in many different biological disciplines. When working with mice, the most commonly used techniques to manipulate genes...

Courses: Developmental Biology Genetics

mathematical modelhomologous recombinationCre/loxgene targeting

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Using Gamification to Teach Undergraduate Students about Scientific Writing

Despite its importance, scientific writing is often deprioritized in undergraduate biology classes. Reasons include assumed prior knowledge, lack of class time, tedious grading, and the complexity and challenges associated with quality writing. To...

Courses: Science Process Skills

gamificationscientific writingE-LearningInstant FeedbackInteractive LearningReading Scientific PapersVIdeo/computer game

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A Quick and Simple Natural Selection Role Play

Teaching evolution remains a challenging task in biology education. Students enter the classroom with stubborn misconceptions and many traditional examples of the process of evolution may not resonate with students. This short role play activity...

Courses: Ecology Ecology Evolution Genetics Plant Biology

EvolutionfitnessNatural Selectionheritability

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It's a bird! It's a plane! It's biomechanics!

Biomechanics is a discipline that draws from physics and engineering principles to understand the movement and structure of living organisms. It is highly interdisciplinary in nature and can be incorporated into general biology and ecology...

Courses: Anatomy-Physiology Ecology Ecology Evolution

EvolutionecologybatphysiologyAnatomybirdFlightforcesinsect

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Why Meiosis Matters: The case of the fatherless snake

A compelling reason to learn something can make all the difference in students’ motivation to learn it. Motivation, in turn, is one of the key attitudes that drives learning. This story presents students with a compelling puzzle of a...

Courses: Genetics Science Process Skills

meiosismitosissex determinationAsexual reproductionParthenogenesis

Teaching Tools and Strategies

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Making toast: Using analogies to explore concepts in bioinformatics

Contemporary biology is moving towards heavy reliance on computational methods to manage, find patterns, and derive meaning from large-scale data, such as genomic sequences. Biology teachers are increasingly compelled to prepare students with...

Courses: Bioinformatics

bioinformaticsworkflowgenome

Teaching Tools and Strategies

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"Boost your evolution IQ": An evolution misconceptions game

Students often enter introductory biology courses with misconceptions about evolution. For example, many students believe that traits arise when a species needs them or that evolutionary processes are goal-oriented. To address these and other...

Courses: Evolution

Evolutionactive learningNatural Selectiongroup workmisconceptions

Teaching Tools and Strategies

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An Interactive Protocol for In-Classroom DNA Extraction

Using commonly available materials, this tool allows students to extract DNA, exploring DNA chemistry and the principles of experimental design and execution. We take a “Choose Your Own Adventure” approach encouraging students to...

Courses: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Genetics Introductory Biology

geneticsDNAbiochemical structure and function

Teaching Tools and Strategies

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Science “Fails”: A Bank of Historical Examples for Learning From Failure in Science

Learning from failure is critically important to the processes of scientific inquiry, discovery, and invention. However, students are not routinely taught how to reflect on, learn from, and ultimately embrace failure, and relatively few curricular...

Courses: Introductory Physics: Calculus-Based Introductory Biology Professional Development and Career Planning Science Process Skills

metacognitionScience process skillsLearning from failurepower and privilegestudent wellbeing

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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: Bioinformatics

bioinformaticsgenomicscodingJupyter notebookcommand lineCyVersescriptingnext generation sequencing analysis

Teaching Tools and Strategies

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A Pandemic Pivot: Podcast as an Active Engagement Tool in the Classroom and Beyond

Higher education in STEM undoubtedly integrates the use of technology as a primary mode for content delivery to undergraduate students. This became especially salient throughout the shift to online education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite...

Courses: Science Process Skills

VaccinesReplication of virusesCOVID-19 transmission

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Forensic Phylogenetics: Implementing Tree-thinking in a Court of Law

Here we describe an in-class activity developed for Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity (BioEE1780) at Cornell University, an introductory course required of all biology majors. This activity offers instructors an engaging and real-life...

Courses: Microbiology

phylogeneticsTree thinkingparaphyly

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Squirreling Around for Science: Observing Sciurid Rodents to Investigate Animal Behavior

Hands-on research experiences are important opportunities for students to learn about the nature of inquiry and gain confidence in solving problems. Here, we present an inquiry-based lesson plan that investigates the foraging behavior of sciurid...

Courses: Ecology Ecology Introductory Biology Science Process Skills

foragingbehaviorbehavioral ecologySciuridSquirrelSquirrel-NetTrade-offVigilance

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Sex and gender: What does it mean to be female or male?

This lesson provides three activities to engage non-science major students in a discussion about sex, gender, gender identity, and sex determination. Students prepare for the lesson by reading a short article titled Sex and gender: What is the...

Courses: Anatomy-Physiology Introductory Biology

gendersex determinationgender identitysex