Participation in research provides personal and professional benefits for undergraduates. However, some students face institutional barriers that prevent their entry into research, particularly those from underrepresented groups who may stand to gain the most from research experiences. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) effectively scale research availability, but many only last for a single semester, which is rarely enough time for a novice to develop proficiency. To address these challenges, we present the Pipeline CURE, a framework that integrates a single research question throughout a biology curriculum. Students are introduced to the research system - in this implementation, C. elegans epigenetics research - with their first course in the major. After revisiting the research system in several subsequent courses, students can choose to participate in an upper-level research experience. In the Pipeline, students build resilience via repeated exposure to the same research system. Its iterative, curriculum-embedded approach is flexible enough to be implemented at a range of institutions using a variety of research questions. By uniting evidence-based teaching methods with ongoing scientific research, the Pipeline CURE provides a new model for overcoming barriers to participation in undergraduate research.

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 tea, coffee, spices, herbs, vegetables, essential oils, medicines, cleaning supplies, and pesticides. Over the course of one semester, students work in teams to design experiments in three experimental modules to test whether bioactive compounds have effects on Daphnia heart rate, antibacterial activity, or caterpillar behavior. In a fourth module, they research solutions to an environmental problem. Students are involved in multiple scientific practices as they make their own experimental decisions, analyze data including using statistics to carefully justify their preliminary conclusions, and have the opportunity to improve their experiment and repeat it. Iteration is also emphasized by the fact that students go through the whole process from design to presentation repeatedly for three experiments. In the process, students experience for themselves the real complexity of scientific investigations and what it takes to rigorously show cause-and-effect relationships. The pedagogical focus is on providing introductory students with a supportive structure in a way that empowers them to make informed experimental decisions and be successful. At the end of the semester, the majority of students displayed a strong sense of personal involvement and an appreciation of the difficulties of scientific experimentation in open-ended written reflections. Students reported that statistics was one of the most difficult yet valuable experiences in these labs and demonstrated significant gains on a statistical test.

Primary image: Summary of the Lesson showing that student decide on which bioactive compounds to test in three model organisms (image attributions listed in Acknowledgments).

Laboratory experiences in large-enrollment introductory science courses often utilize “cookie-cutter style” laboratory experiences due to the relative simplicity of setting up the lab stations, as well as a need to teach students particular course content. These experiences rarely offer insights into the way science is done in the research setting, resulting in a lack of understanding of the scientific process. In addition, students enrolled in non-majors introductory science courses often fail to see the relevance between what they are doing in the lab and what they are learning in the lecture portion of their course. To address this gap, we developed a laboratory module for a non-majors Human Biology course that provides students with a hands-on, authentic research experience using the iWorx software and hardware for human physiology. Weekly modules were designed to guide students through the major steps of the research process, including reading current scientific literature, developing a testable hypothesis, designing and performing a physiology experiment, analyzing data and presenting their findings to their peers. The described course framework encouraged students to participate in the scientific process, providing them with the opportunity to engage in an authentic research experience. The model described here could be adapted for use with introductory or advanced students, and could be modified to fit any research model available to the instructor. Utilizing the multi-week format described is recommended for students to gain the full benefit from the research-design-revise process.

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.