The goal of this article is to describe an active learning exercise that can be used in a variety of advanced microbiology courses, including bacterial physiology, ecology, or systems biology. The gut microbiome is a multi-species bacterial community that is impacted by outside factors, such as the food we consume or treatments with antibiotics, and impacts our health. In this active learning experience; students start with a simple 'pasta' simulation of a gut microbiome, adapted from a previously published lesson, where different types of pasta in a plastic bag simulate different bacteria in the gut and the composition of the pasta types is representative of diet related differences in the microbiome. Students will then mimic an antibiotic treatment by removing certain pasta/bacteria and replacing them with beans/different bacteria. Next, students will analyze the gut microbiome at the level of phylum, genus, or species. With the help of assigned scientific literature, students will learn how the composition of the gut microbiome responds to diet, a process that is accompanied by the synthesis of bacterial fermentation and other bacterial metabolic products that elicit a molecular response in the host intestinal cells. Students will gain an initial understanding of how these changes impact human health. Through this experience, students will increase their knowledge of bacterial metabolic pathways and products, improve their understanding of the complex community that constitutes the microbiome, analyze the microbiome at multiple systematic levels, and apply their knowledge in a context that is relevant to human health.

Contagious diseases are unavoidable realities of life. Thus, understanding pathogens and their respective diseases is important in many biological subfields including evolution, ecology, health sciences, microbiology, and others. While all college students will have encountered pathogenic diseases at some point in their lives, many will not have studied them in a classroom setting. As a result, students may not be able to accurately formulate a comprehensive definition of pathogenic disease on their own. Here, I provide an engaging activity where students construct a definition of pathogenic disease based on their lived experiences using the think-pair-share technique. Students are asked to define pathogenic disease individually, then in small groups, and finally as an entire class. At the end of this activity, the class will have agreed upon one definition for pathogenic disease. Following this, the students are asked to put their new definition into practice by completing a categorization activity where they must sort different diseases into the following categories: genetic, environmental, or pathogenic. This immediate application of new knowledge helps foster long-term learning. Students were highly engaged with the material, and this lesson also fostered a sense of classroom community as it encouraged students to share their knowledge while completing the categorization assignment. An end-of-term review activity showcased that the students were able to recall the information learned during this lesson at the end of the course. This lesson is easy to implement and can help students understand pathogenic disease in both introductory and advanced courses.

Primary Image: Think Pair Share! How to define pathogenic disease. Several desks are arranged in a circle. The question “How do you define pathogenic disease?” is written along the bottom. In the middle of the circle of desks there is a thought bubble with a symbol of people talking within it.

In this activity, students will explore the concept of binary fission, generation time, and bacterial growth curves, with an emphasis on the log phase. Students will use semi-log graphs and linear graphs to plot bacterial cell growth.

Cell Project

CIVID-19 Model

SIR Modelling

Epidemiology

Public Health – intro

In this lesson, learners will hear about research that focuses on bacterial antibiotic resistance and biofilm production. Students will see how antibiotic resistance is measured and interpret a graph measuring biofilm production of these bacterial soil isolates. Then, learners view and reflect on an interview with microbiology researcher Dr. Danielle Graham, who collected the data that they interpreted.