CourseSource: Resources

Teaching Tools and Strategies

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Lateral Transfer Maps as a Metacognitive Tool in First Year STEM Courses

We introduce the Lateral Transfer Map (LTM), a tool for students to actively and visually explore the transfer of ideas, skills, and concepts across concurrent coursework. The LTM is an extension of a concept map, replacing interconnected concepts...

Courses: Professional Development and Career Planning Science Process Skills

concept mapmetacognitionfirst-year studenttransfer

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SEAS CURE: Exploring Coral Biology Across Scales

Complex biological concepts (like symbiosis and coral biology) that span multiple scales and cross disciplinary boundaries are often difficult for students to understand. This complexity is compounded by the challenges inherent to teaching and...

Courses: Anatomy-Physiology Cell Biology Ecology Ecology Introductory Biology Science Process Skills

microscopyAnatomySymbiosisMetabolismbleachinginvertebratedinoflagellate

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Evaluating the Quick Fix: Weight Loss Drugs and Cellular Respiration

One key to student success in introductory and cell biology courses is a foundational knowledge of cellular respiration. This is a content area in which students often harbor misconceptions that make cellular respiration particularly challenging...

Courses: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Cell Biology Introductory Biology

data analysisCellular RespirationElectron Transport ChainEnergy transformationsMitochondriaOxidative phosphorylationWeight loss drugs24-dinitrophenol (DNP)

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Building student literacy and metacognition through reading science in the news

Ensuring students' science literacy is essential for preparation for study in science disciplines and is of critical importance given contemporary challenges in determining the legitimacy and accuracy of science in popular media. This lesson...

Courses: Introductory Biology

metacognitionStem cellsscience literacycloninggenetically modified organismshuman genetic diseasescience news

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Follow the Sulfur: Using Yeast Mutants to Study a Metabolic Pathway

Students are frequently overwhelmed by the complexity of metabolic pathways and they think they have "learned" the pathway when they have memorized the individual reactions. This laboratory lesson helps students to understand the...

Courses: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Genetics Introductory Biology Microbiology Science Process Skills

SelectionyeastMetabolismcysteinemediamethioninemutantPathwaysulfur

LessonPlus

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The Power of Place: A Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience Studying Urban Ecology, Local Apple Trees and Disease Susceptibility

Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) offered early in an undergraduate student’s career have the potential to include a greater number and diversity of students than one-on-one mentored research. CUREs that use a...

Courses: Ecology Ecology

Disease ecologyurban ecologyUrban food forestsUrban heat islandsGenetic resistance

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Go Extinct! An Award-Winning Evolution Game That Teaches Tree-Thinking as Students Pursue the Winning Strategy

Evolutionary trees communicate both the diversity and unity of life, a central and important scientific concept, as highlighted by the Vision and Change undergraduate biology education movement. Evolutionary trees and cladograms are diagrams...

Courses: Evolution

phylogeneticsnatural historyBiodiversitycladogramCommon ancestorEvolutionary treeLand vertebratesMonophyletic cladeTetrapods

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My Fish Tank: An Active Learning Activity for Bacterial Nitrogen Metabolism

This active learning activity introduces students to the second part of the nitrogen cycle, nitrification. In terrestrial and aquatic environments, bacteria from the Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter genera oxidize ammonia first to nitrite (via a...

Courses: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Ecology Ecology Microbiology

nitrogen cyclenitrificationnitrifying bacteria

Teaching Tools and Strategies

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Walkabout: An Easy to Use, Experiential Learning Activity for Applying Abstract Concepts to the Real-World

Students can have difficulty recognizing examples of course concepts in the real-world. They particularly struggle with phenomena that are ambiguously defined, have mimics, or are hard to distinguish from other phenomena. Students can better...

Courses: Ecology Ecology Science Process Skills

data gatheringgreen technologyobservations

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Exploring the Complexities of Photosynthesis Through a Comic Strip

Photosynthesis is a conceptually challenging topic. The small scale at which photosynthesis takes place makes it difficult for students to visualize what is occurring, and students are often overwhelmed by all of the details of the process. This...

Courses: Introductory Biology Plant Biology

photosynthesislight-dependent reactionsCalvin cyclechloroplast

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A CURE-based approach to teaching genomics using mitochondrial genomes

There is an abundance (currently over 1016 DNA bases) of publicly available genetic sequence data and a dearth of trained genomicists to process and interpret it, necessitating more trained bioinformaticians with biological expertise. For...

Courses: Bioinformatics Genetics

proteinsMitochondrial GenomesNuclear GenomesrRNAtRNA

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Teaching RNAseq at Undergraduate Institutions: A tutorial and R package from the Genome Consortium for Active Teaching

Next-generation sequencing is radically changing the study of biology, but there are currently few resources aimed at teaching the required laboratory and data-analysis skills to undergraduate students. This gap is especially true at primarily...

Courses: Bioinformatics Introductory Biology

statisticsbioinformaticsRNAseqgene expressioncomputer programming

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Osmosis Through the Lens of Sexual Health

Osmosis contributes to a range of biological phenomena, from functioning of nephrons in animals to stomatal opening and closing in plants; yet, scientifically simple ideas about osmosis are common. These ideas limit learners’ comprehension...

Courses: Anatomy-Physiology Cell Biology Introductory Biology Science Process Skills

OsmosisDiffusionsexual healthsocial and cultural embeddedness of scienceinclusive dialogue

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Antibiotic Resistance Genes Detection in Environmental Samples

Our aim is to provide an authentic research experience for undergraduate students in a variety of biology courses through collaboration between a four-year university and a community college. This lab series teaches transferable and universal...

Courses: Introductory Biology Microbiology Science Process Skills

geneticsenvironmentmicrobiologyUndergraduateantibiotic-resistancePCRgel electrophoresisauthentic inquiry

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Teaching epidemiology and principles of infectious disease using popular media and the case of Typhoid Mary

Allied health students often struggle to understand how particular content, such as epidemiology, connects to their future careers. This activity uses the case of Typhoid Mary as a foundation for exploring epidemiology and infectious disease...

Courses: Microbiology Science Process Skills

epidemiologycase studyinfectous diseasepopular mediaTyphoid Mary

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A Simple Method for Predicting a Molecule's Biological Properties From Its Polarity

The distinction between very polar and less polar substances is a foundation of biochemistry, cell biology, and physiology; it surfaces in multiple concept inventories and elaborations of biological core concepts. However, in our experience, most...

Courses: Anatomy-Physiology Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Cell Biology Introductory Biology

Diffusionsolubilitycovalent bondshydrophilichydrophobicpartition coefficientplasma membranepolarity

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From Dirt to Streptomyces DNA

The purpose of this semester-long Lesson is to give students an authentic, course-based undergraduate research experience during which they learn basic and advanced microbiological and molecular biology techniques. This project begins with the...

Courses: Microbiology

MetabolismAntibiotic productionrRNA genesSecondary metabolitesStreptomyces

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Central Dogma, Dictionaries, and Functions: Using Programming Concepts to Simulate Biological Processes

Technologies like next-generation sequencing, proteomics, and high-throughput phenotyping have transformed the way we do biology. There is a continued need for scientists with computational skills to analyze biological data while understanding the...

Courses: Bioinformatics

computationpythonJupyter notebookFunctionscentral dogmaDictionaries

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An undergraduate bioinformatics curriculum that teaches eukaryotic gene structure

Gene structure, transcription, translation, and alternative splicing are challenging concepts for many undergraduates studying biology. These topics are typically covered in a traditional lecture environment, but students often fail to master and...

Courses: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Bioinformatics Genetics

bioinformaticsGenome BrowsergenomicsRNAseqsplicingComputer ModelGene Structure

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My Dog IS My Homework: Exploring Canine Genetics to Understand Genotype-Phenotype Relationships

To facilitate understanding of the fundamental genetic concept of the genotype-phenotype relationship in our introductory biology students, we designed an engaging multi-week series of related lessons about canine genetics in which students...

Courses: Bioinformatics Genetics Introductory Biology Science Process Skills