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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: EcologyEcology

    Lesson
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    Bacteria to Brains in Backyard Coyotes: An Interdisciplinary Pedagogical Case Study
    Our interdisciplinary pedagogical case study explores the differences between rural and urban coyotes at the levels of organismal and community ecology. The focus is on how coyotes’ gut microbiomes could affect their behavior via...
    Lesson
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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...
    Lesson
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    Marsh Madness: Using Video Games and a Case Study to Explore Food Webs and Ecosystem Services in Carpinteria Salt Marsh Reserve
    As the complexity and interconnectedness of our world increases, we are continually expected to be capable of complex, non-linear thinking in order to successfully tackle and solve the challenges we face in the 21st century. Tackling these...

    Courses: EcologyEcology

    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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    Ain't No Mountain Pine Enough: A Case Study of How Mountain Pine Beetles are Affecting Ecosystem Processes
    This case study engages students in generating hypotheses and predictions, analyzing and interpreting data, critically evaluating contrasting results in science, and thinking about feedbacks between biota and abiotic ecosystem dynamics. To address...

    Courses: EcologyEcology

    Lesson
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    3878

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    CURE-all: Large Scale Implementation of Authentic DNA Barcoding Research into First-Year Biology Curriculum
    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...
    Lesson
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    Student-Driven Design-and-Improve Modules to Explore the Effect of Plant Bioactive Compounds in Three Model Organisms
    Engaging and supporting introductory level students in authentic research experiences during required coursework is challenging. Plant bioactive compounds attract students' natural curiosity as they are found in many familiar items such as...
    Lesson
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    Fly Exercise: A Simple Experiment to Test the Physiological Effects of Exercise on a Model Organism
    Model organisms are commonly used to study and experimentally explore biological processes in ways that are technically or ethically not possible in humans. For this reason, model organisms are an essential component of scientific research and...
    Lesson
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    Small Organisms with Big Consequences: Understanding the Microbial World Around Us
    Creating a hands-on lab that conveys important information while simultaneously allowing for student autonomy can be difficult. This is particularly true for the field of microbiology, in which labs often rely on “recipe-style”...
    Essay
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    Designing an Asynchronous, Self-Led Aquatic Ecology Field Trip
    Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing need to teach students online, aquatic scientists are looking for ways to give students field experiences virtually. Asynchronous, self-led field trips are emerging as a solution. However, due to the...

    Courses: EcologyEcology

    Lesson
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    Drawing “Octo-Pines”: Ice-Breaker Active-Learning Activities to Introduce Drawing-to-Learn in Biology
    Drawing has been advocated as a technique to develop visual literacy and observational skills in biology students. To increase student motivation and confidence to draw in our course, we developed an introductory active-learning lesson with a...

    Courses: EcologyEcology EvolutionEvolution

    Lesson
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    Teaching Biodiversity with Museum Specimens in an Inquiry-Based Lab
    In response to the growth of biology datasets and broad efforts to digitize data, an increasingly important skill for science students is the management and analysis of large datasets. We designed an inquiry-based lab module to introduce students...
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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...
    Lesson
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    "Got Algae?" A Sorting Game for Introducing the Weird and Wonderful Diversity of Algae
    Algae are a fascinating and diverse organismal group, with global ecological importance, a storied evolutionary history and deep connections to both contemporary and historical human societies. Yet non-experts who teach algal diversity face a lack...
    LessonPlus
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    Keep It Shrimple: An Adaptable Student-Driven Research Project for the Introductory Biology Laboratory
    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...
    Lesson
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    Gotcha! Which fly trap is the best? An introduction to experimental data collection and analysis
    Collecting data from experimental observations is an important component of the scientific process; likewise, the analysis of the data is essential to understanding the observed trends and patterns from any experiment. Allowing students to...
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    A CURE for Salmonella: A Laboratory Course in Pathogen Microbiology and Genomics
    Rapid advances in genomics and bioinformatics, the vast amount of data generated by next-generation sequencing, and the penetration of the ‘-omics’ into many areas of biology have created a need for students with hands-on experience with...
    Lesson
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    Understanding Gastric Acid Secretion: An Active Learning Approach
    The human digestive system is a diverse network of cells, tissues, and organs that is regulated by systemic (e.g., nervous and endocrine systems) and local factors (e.g., secretions, pH, and the microbiome). Given the volume of content and the...
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    An Inquiry-Based Project Added to Traditional Labs: Hands-On Fish Awareness Research in Freshwater Systems Conducted by First-Year Biology Students
    This project involves students in an inquiry-based project added to the introductory biology laboratory course for majors in fall 2019. Research has shown that student engagement in authentic research has significant positive impacts on...