Description

There is general agreement that scientific literacy in biology should include both information about specific topics and an understanding the process by which this information is obtained.  The Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education document produced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) identified the key concepts that students need to understand as well as the set of competencies they need to acquire.  The competencies include the ability to apply the process of science, the ability to use quantitative reasoning, and the ability to use modeling and simulation.  Instructors of a variety of different courses have developed strategies for doing this that go beyond the standard textbooks, class lectures, and laboratory exercises.  These include the careful analysis of graphs, the reading of news stories and related journal articles, the use of course based undergraduate research experiences or CUREs, and extended undergraduate research programs such as SEA-PHAGES.  

While the goals of undergraduate education have changed, most textbooks have not.  This is particularly a problem in the case of Microbiology, where the primary target audience for textbooks is students in allied health fields such as nursing.  To address this issue, this project focuses on the use of data analysis problems to introduce students to specific topics in microbiology and to give them practice in the interpretation of figures and tables of data.  Each problem is based on a single journal article and includes five to eight multiple-choice questions.  The multiple-choice questions are of three basic types: type A questions are those that ask students to recall basic terms or concepts related to the problem; type B questions are those that ask students to read a table or figure of data; and type C questions are those that ask students to draw conclusions from the data, to make predictions, or to integrate the material with other information presented in the course.

The problems are written in Microsoft Word so that other instructors can download and modify them as necessary to meet the needs of students in their courses.  The problems may be used as part of problem sets or homework assignments, discussion boards, or examinations.  The answers to the multiple-choice questions are not given in order to encourage careful reading of the text and analysis of the data, although most instructors should be able to figure them out quickly.  The bibliographic citation for the journal article on which each problem is based is included, so instructors or students can follow up on the problem.  Instructors are encouraged to create similar problems based on their personal areas of interest and those of the students in their courses and to upload them into the Project site.  A more expanded Introduction to the project with a list of relevant References and suggestions for formatting the problems is included in the Content folder.

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