Helping students understand where they should provide citations in research manuscripts is an essential aspect of training them in the responsible and ethical conduct of research. This Lesson comprises about 35 minutes of in-class work to help students learn how to avoid plagiarism. The Lesson is ideally integrated into a course in which a research report will be written. It introduces students to professional norms and explores the ethical “gray areas” surrounding the topic of citation. First, small student groups discuss case studies to reach a consensus on the question, “Is this plagiarism?” After a report-out to identify emergent themes, students then evaluate a paragraph from a published primary research manuscript and discuss why some sentences have citations and others do not. The choice of manuscript excerpt is flexible, based on teacher preferences and course subject area. This Lesson integrates critical instruction in research ethics that is applied to the science skill of communicating results. Student progress can be monitored using a summative homework-style assessment, in which students are tasked to determine which sentences in a paragraph should have citations and then to rank those sentences in order of how confident the group is that a citation is required. By the end of the Lesson, students have explored the definition of plagiarism and the ethical norms and processes for identifying when a citation is necessary.

Primary image: Text Duplication. Copying the work of others is plagiarism unless a proper citation is provided (copyright Joseph Ross).

Many undergraduate students receive little guidance on how to critically read, interpret data within, or present information from the primary scientific literature before they begin senior independent research experiences or enter professional or graduate school. To provide guidance on reading and formally presenting scientific information, I incorporated a two-part Journal Club Project into my 400-level developmental neurobiology class. In this project, students worked in teams throughout the semester to present primary scientific literature to the rest of the class and incorporate peer and instructor feedback into their work. Student work was facilitated by different grading rubrics for the two parts of the Journal Club Project. Each of these grading rubrics contained elements to guide the process of delivering and the presentation of scientific content within student talks. Here, I will provide a detailed description of and share my instructions and grading rubrics for the Journal Club Project.

Primary Image: Students delivering a journal club presentation. Two students incorporating peer evaluation feedback from a past talk into their final Journal Club Project presentation.

Visualizing kinetic processes can be an impediment to student mastery of basic science coursework. To remedy this obstacle, I created an educational program called Biology from Molecules to Embryos^© (BioME), which provides 28 animated lessons for genetics and embryology. To provide access to the international educational community, BioME has been posted as an interactive, open access website. Empirical data demonstrates that BioME is an efficacious educational resource, which elicits positive student perception of its utility. The animated lessons are useful for student self-study. For instructors who choose to display BioME lessons as visual aids for their presentations, explanatory text can be hidden so that it does not compete with the instructors’ verbal explanations. For instructors who would not choose to use premade lessons, downloadable excerpts are provided. These excerpts are short presentations of specific topics that can be incorporated at any point of a lesson according to the instructor’s preference and student needs. To provide opportunities for self-quizzing and to summarize key points, multiple PopUp files are provided for most lessons. To allow students to actively access their mastery of the material and to take advantage of the testing effect, multiple-choice practice questions are also provided with each lesson. The level of these questions ranges from first-order recall to third-order application. The higher order questions promote deep processing by requiring students to deduce answers by actively integrating material within and across lessons. Thus, BioME can help to advance the understanding of biological sciences and promote the usage of animations to present dynamic processes.

Primary Image: BioME Animations. Sequential images of ovulation represent the dynamic progressions of BioME animations.

Lecture-Free Classroom