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Data science is becoming a mainstay in research. Despite this, very few STEM graduates matriculate with basic formal training in programming. The current lesson plan was developed to introduce undergraduates studying chemistry or biology to chemoinformatics and data science in medicinal chemistry. The objective of this lesson plan is to introduce students to common techniques used in analyzing medicinal chemistry data sets, such as visualizing chemical space, filtering to molecules that observe the Lipinski rules of drug-likeness, and principal component analysis. The content provided in this lesson plan is intended to serve as a tutorial-based reference for aspiring researchers. The lesson plan is split into two three-hour class sessions, each with an introductory slide deck, Python notebook consisting of several modules, and lab report template. During this activity, students learned to parse medicinal chemistry data sets with Python, perform simple machine learning analyses, and develop interactive graphs. During each session, students complete the Python notebook protocol and fill out a lab report template after a short lecture. By the end of the lesson plan, students were able to generate and manipulate various plots of chemical space and they reported having increased confidence in their understanding of chemistry, Python, and data science.

An essential skill for STEM undergraduates is the ability to understand the world by manipulating, visualizing, and analyzing data to make or evaluate claims. Current online debate, without peer-reviewed literature, explores which of two common R syntax environments (base R or tidyverse) is best for teaching novice R users. In an in-person undergraduate course on evolutionary biology, we implemented two coding curricula: one using base R (n = 49 students) and the other using tidyverse (n = 58 students). We compared these two curricula using several dimensions of student success: interpretation of syntax, creation of appropriate data visualizations and analyses, and an absence of sex bias in performance. A linear model revealed prior experience had the largest estimated effect, followed by syntax environment; sex had the smallest effect. Pedagogical approaches that ensure students have repeated opportunities for practice and that implement techniques to overcome student frustration and anxiety are likely more important than syntax environment when learning coding in biology classes. Furthermore, the small effect of sex combined with the high proportion of females in the biological sciences suggests introducing computer programming in biology may allow females to discover interest and ability that they may not have had if computer programming was the sole propriety of computer science departments.

During COVID-19 lockdowns, online learning activities had to be developed for the Undergraduate and Masters by Coursework Bioinformatics students at RMIT University. Therefore, we designed an integrative, industry-based research assignment, which guided the students through a drug discovery project from target identification to lead optimization. The students were able to utilize this real-life scenario to apply multiple diverse but complementary bioinformatic principles to analyze biological and chemical data leading to meaningful predictions. This activity was utilized as a final assessment of the students' knowledge.

Past studies have established cell division as a difficult topic in the Nigerian senior school system. While the lecture method has been used over time to overcome the challenges relative to students' understanding of cell division, a deficit in the literature is whether or not cultural teaching methodologies would help students' understanding of the concept. This study aims at testing the potency of the Culturo-Techno-Contextual Approach (CTCA) in enhancing students' understanding of cell division. The study is anchored on Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, Nkrumah's ethnophilosophy, and Heidegger's techno-philosophy. The quasi-experimental study had 26 students from the Feranmi Comprehensive High School (control group), with 21 students from the Royal Priesthood Secondary School (experimental group). The results showed that the experimental group (Mean = 33.29 and SD = 2.37) significantly outperformed the control group (Mean = 23.19 and SD = 4.92) in cell division [F (1, 44) = 137.19; p<0.05].

Conventional teaching about obesity, especially within a physiology-based course, tends to focus on the biological aspects. Unfortunately, framing obesity from a solely biological perspective ignores many factors that contribute to the condition, leaving students with an overly simplistic idea. We developed an introductory exercise physiology course that was cotaught with a physiologist and a sociologist to provide health science majors with a more holistic view of complex socioscientific issues including obesity. From our course, students self-reported changes in their views about obesity and exercise to include more empathy as well as nuance regarding exercise and body size as physiological and biological processes that are experienced and take place socioculturally. We found value in this cross-disciplinary approach and recommend it as a frame for other exercise physiology courses; we recognize this is not always possible, so we also provide resources for faculty who do not have a sociologist to coteach with.

The visibility of female role models in science is vital for engaging and retaining women in scientific fields. In this study, we analyse four senior secondary science courses delivered across the states and territories in Australia: Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Science, and Physics. We compared male and female representation within the science courses by examining the mentions of male and female scientists along with the context of their inclusions in the syllabuses. We find a clear gender bias with only one unique mention of a female scientist. We also find a clear Eurocentric focus and narrow representation of scientists. This bias will contribute to the continuing low engagement of women in scientific fields. We outline possible solutions to address this issue, including the accreditation of scientific discoveries to include female scientists and explicit discussion of structural barriers preventing the participation and progression of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Multiple-choice questions (MCQ) are commonly used on histology examinations. There are many guidelines for how to properly write MCQ and many of them recommend avoiding negatively worded stems. The current study aims to investigate differences between positively and negatively worded stems in a medical histology course by comparing the item difficulty and discrimination index between matched MCQs. When questions were matched by modified Bloom's Taxonomy classification, presence or absence of an image, and timing of content presentation, negatively worded lower level Bloom's questions were less difficult and had a lower discrimination index.

Mosquitoes are both a nuisance and public health threat. In recent decades, outbreaks of dengue, chikungunya, and Zika in Florida have raised awareness of the importance of domestic and peri-domestic container mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. The synanthropic nature of these species, coupled with their preference for human bloodmeals, makes them a concern of and target for mosquito control. However, mosquito control programs (MCPs) often struggle to sustainably manage these mosquitoes because of the cryptic and abundant nature of their larval habitats, and negative public opinion towards MCPs and the use of insecticides. Fortunately, mosquito control can be improved by the actions of homeowners and residents as they have regular access to their own property and containers. Schoolbased education programs can provide a means to community-wide education regarding mosquito control. We developed and delivered a mosquito education program to elementary, middle, and high school students. Knowledge of mosquitoes significantly improved in participating elementary and middle/high school students. This knowledge was partially retained according to a follow-up test that was administered. Additionally, attitudes towards mosquito control and at-home control methods significantly improved following the instruction. The improvements in knowledge and attitudes observed in students suggest they can and should be targeted for mosquito education campaigns by mosquito control programs and educators.

A broadly applicable semester-long course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE)-inspired organic II laboratory course was developed from an engaging story supported by the current literature surrounding paraben use in consumer products. The project involves the synthesis of brominated parabens followed by an investigation into the structure--activity relationship between the ester lipophilicity and antimicrobial properties. The synthetic route for the project mirrors the sequence of reactions and topics typically covered in a second-semester organic course to support student learning within their lecture. The project culminates in a microbial cell death assay which lends a simple biological application to the project that is attainable for a broad audience of learners. The final assessments involve a notebook-based exam and the creation of an article mirroring a submission to the ACS journal "Organic Letters." Three iterations of the course spread across three years and seven lab sections have supported the reliability of the synthetic route and have provided significant data validating the engaging nature of the lab course. Such engagement has decreased attrition, promoted better notebook skills, and helped to develop strong writing skills within our second-year undergraduates.

Two-stage exams have gained traction in education as a means of creating collaborative active-learning experiences in the classroom in a manner that advances learning, positively increases student engagement, and reduces test anxiety. Published analyses have focused almost exclusively on the increase in student scores from the first individual stage to the second collaboration stage and have shown clear positive effects on gains in student scores. Missing from these analyses is a comprehensive evaluation of the effects of individual preparation, the characteristics of questions, and small group composition on the outcomes two-stage exams. I developed a simple quantitative framework that provides a flexible approach for estimating and evaluating the effects of individuals, questions, and groups on student performance. Additionally, the framework yields statistics appropriate for making inferences about productive collaboration, consensus-building, and counter-productive interaction that happens within small groups. Analyses of 12 exams across two courses and 2 years using the quantitative framework revealed considerable variation for all three of these effects within and among exams. Overall, the results highlight the value of quantitative estimation of two-stage exams for gaining perspective on the effects of individuals, questions, and groups on student performance, and facilitates data-driven revision of assessments, curricula, and teaching strategies towards achieving gains in students' collaborative skills.

The Kruger-Dunning effect was studied as it related to performance in chemistry courses based on student differences in academic background. Student major was chosen as the classification to look at the effect of students with different interests/specializations. Chemistry majors tended to predict lower performance than biology majors, while unexpectedly many non-natural science majors predicted higher examination scores than those majoring in the physical sciences.

The biological world includes many negatively valenced activities, like predation, parasitism, and disease. Do children's books cover these activities? And how do parents discuss them with their children? In a content analysis of children's nature books (Study 1), we found that negatively valenced concepts were rarely depicted across genres and reading levels. When parents encountered negative information in books (Studies 2-3), they did not omit it but rather elaborated on it, adding their own comments and questions, and their children (ages 3-11) were more likely to remember the negative information but less likely to generalize that information beyond the animal in the book. These findings suggest that early input relevant to biological competition may hamper children's developing understanding of ecology and evolution.

Community college biology faculty play an important role in educating the future STEM workforce. These faculty rely on professional organizations to provide programming and networking opportunities to enhance their professional development.

The rise of "big data" within the biological sciences has resulted in an urgent demand for coding skills in the next generation of scientists. To address this issue, several institutions and departments across the country have incorporated coding into their curricula. I describe a coding module developed and deployed in an undergraduate parasitology course, with the overarching goal of familiarizing students with the Python programming language. The module, which was completed over four days, aimed to help students become comfortable with the command line; execute summary statistics and Student's "t"-tests through coding; create simple bar and line graphs using code; and, parse, handle, and analyze imported data sets. There is currently no standard "best practice" for teaching coding skills to biology majors, but this module can serve as a template to ease students into coding, and can then be modified and built out for teaching more advanced skills.

Drug Outreach, Promoting Awareness (DOPA) is an undergraduate outreach program for local high school students designed to convey the neurobiological basis, risks, and addictive potential of commonly abused drugs. Here we describe DOPA and evaluate the program, including its impact on high school student attitudes about drug harm risk and addiction. Undergraduate neuroscience students versed in the neurobiology, physiology, and policy of drugs are trained in active learning methods, enabling them to create engaging and interactive classroom-based educational materials. Survey results showed that participation in DOPA increased high school student perceptions of the addictive potential and harm risk of drugs, which studies have shown to be inversely correlated with drug-taking. High school students also responded positively to the interactive nature of the program. These findings demonstrate how extensively trained undergraduates who are close peers to high school students can effectively lead science outreach initiatives and shift adolescent attitudes about drugs.

National calls to transform undergraduate classrooms highlight the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). As biologists, we use principles from chemistry and physics to make sense of the natural world. One might assume that scientists, regardless of discipline, use similar principles, resources, and reasoning to explain crosscutting phenomena. However, the context of complex natural systems can profoundly impact the knowledge activated. In this study, we used the theoretical lens of framing to explore how experts from different disciplines reasoned about a crosscutting phenomenon. Using interviews conducted with faculty (n = 10) in biology, physics, and engineering, we used isomorphic tasks to explore the impact of item context features (i.e., blood or water) on how faculty framed and reasoned about fluid dynamics, a crosscutting concept. While faculty were internally consistent in their reasoning across prompts, biology experts framed fluid dynamics problems differently than experts in physics and engineering and, as a result, used different principles and resources to reach different conclusions. These results have several implications for undergraduate learners who encounter these cross-disciplinary topics in all of their STEM courses. If each curriculum expects students to develop different reasoning strategies, students may struggle to build a coherent, transferable understanding of crosscutting phenomena.

This paper explores the effect of a paired lab course on students' course outcomes in nonmajors introductory biology at the University of Alaska Anchorage. We compare course completion and final grades for 10,793 students (3736 who simultaneously enrolled in the lab and 7057 who did not). Unconditionally, students who self-select into the lab are more likely to complete the course and to earn a higher grade than students who do not. However, when we condition on observable course, academic, and demographic characteristics, we find much of this difference in student performance outcomes is attributable to selection bias, rather than an effect of the lab itself. The data and discussion challenge the misconception that labs serve as recitations for lecture content, noting that the learning objectives of science labs should be more clearly articulated and assessed independent of lecture course outcomes.

Generating an increasingly skilled and numerous workforces of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professionals is a national priority. Central to this goal is improving the ability of STEM graduates to apply scientific inquiry within oral communication, a necessary skill for STEM professionals. In this case study of an introductory biology course, we observed that providing explanatory feedback to students responding to inquiry-based questions in an oral examination suggests improvements in students' abilities to critically analyze results, draw conclusions, and discuss the broader implications of data. We found students struggled with generating hypotheses and constraining discussions of scientific limitation and broader implications. We show that low-performing students especially benefit from the feedback intervention. The findings of this study are applicable to college and university instructors who are looking to incorporate methods for teaching students to use scientific inquiry effectively during oral communication, particularly those with access to teaching assistants.

Background: Causes produce effects via underlying mechanisms that must be inferred from observable and unobservable structures. Preschoolers show sensitivity to mechanisms in machine-like systems with perceptually distinct causes and effects, but little is known about how children extend causal reasoning to the natural continuous processes studied in elementary school science, or how other abilities impact on this. Aims: We investigated the development of children's ability to predict, observe, and explain three causal processes, relevant to physics, biology, and chemistry, taking into account their verbal and non-verbal ability. Sample: Children aged 5-11 years (N = 107) from London and Oxford, with wide ethnic/linguistic variation, drawn from the middle/upper socioeconomic status (SES) range. Methods: Children were tested individually on causal tasks focused on sinking, absorption, and dissolving, using a novel approach in which they observed contrasting instances of each, to promote attention to mechanism. Further tasks assessed verbal (expressive vocabulary) and non-verbal (block design) ability. Results: Reports improved with age, though with differences between tasks. Even young participants gave good descriptions of what they observed. Causal explanations were more strongly related to observation than to prediction from prior knowledge, but developed more slowly. Non-verbal but not generic verbal ability predicted performance. Conclusions: Reasoning about continuous processes is within the capacity of children from school entry, even using verbal reports, though they find it easier to address more rapid processes. Mechanism inference is uncommon, with non-verbal ability an important influence on progress. Our research is the first to highlight this key factor in children's progress towards thinking about scientific phenomena.

Students learning the skills of science benefit from opportunities to move between the scientific problems and questions they confront and the mathematical tools available to answer the questions and solve the problems. Indeed, students learn science best when they are actively engaged in pursuing answers to authentic and relevant questions. We present an activity teachers can use in the classroom to introduce the concepts of species richness and diversity. We break down the history and logic behind the two primary statistical tools ecologists use to quantify species diversity: Simpson's and Shannon's diversity indices. With hypothetical data, we show how students can learn about and practice the calculations. We then describe an activity where students collect authentic ecological data with pitfall traps while learning some arthropod systematics and practicing their newly acquired quantitative reasoning skills, all within the context of edge effect ecology and habitat conservation. The entire activity reinforces for students how interesting and helpful mathematical models and quantitative reasoning in science can be for understanding biological phenomena, but also for generating more questions, and for designing additional data-collection techniques and experiments.

This paper describes a series of laboratory exercises for upper level biology courses, independent research and/or honors programs. Students sampled fish from a local water body with the assistance of a local fish and wildlife agency. Tissue samples from collected fish were utilized to obtain estimates of the stable isotopes delta[superscript 13]C and delta[superscript 15]N. An open-source mass balance model was utilized to estimate fish diets from isotope values. Isotopes were also used to measure trophic position (TP) and evaluate dietary niche overlap between native and introduced species. It was found that delta[superscript 15]N concentrations increased with each trophic level starting with benthic algae (lowest) to omnivores, then primary carnivores and ultimately piscivores (highest). Estimates of delta[superscript 13]C suggested all collected taxa utilized littoral habitats for feeding purposes. Native chain pickerel ("Esox niger") had the highest delta[superscript 15]N and TP estimates at 14.4 and 4.11, respectively. Nonnative largemouth bass ("Micropterus salmoides") delta[superscript 15]N and TP estimates were 13.56 and 3.86, respectively. Model estimates suggested that chain pickerel and largemouth bass diets were partitioned: pickerel consumed only fish and bass consumed principally invertebrates with some intermittent fish contributions. This lab helped integrate multiple disciplines, provide practical experience, and encourage critical-thinking skills while educating students about trophic ecology. (Contains 4 figures and 1 table.)

In very large lecture classes, student engagement is always a challenge, and many instructors use electronic student response systems (SRS) to promote student engagement and active learning. The conventional wisdom in using student response systems is that the technology matters less than the pedagogy; it is the added value of the instructor that makes the technology successful. We explore the impact of different student response systems in successive years in a general education human biology course, BIOSCI 201, Human Form and Function. Taught by the same instructor using the same textbook, the course used different SRS in three successive spring semesters. Analysis of student assessment data in the lecture portion of the course indicates a statistically significant impact of the use of SRS by students on their grades and a statistically significant difference in the magnitude of that impact when using different SRS.

Background: Prior longitudinal and correlational research with adults and adolescents indicates that spatial ability is a predictor of science learning and achievement. However, there is little research to date with primary-school aged children that addresses this relationship. Understanding this association has the potential to inform curriculum design and support the development of early interventions. Aims: This study examined the relationship between primary-school children's spatial skills and their science achievement. Method: Children aged 7-11 years (N = 123) completed a battery of five spatial tasks, based on a model of spatial ability in which skills fall along two dimensions: intrinsic-extrinsic; static-dynamic. Participants also completed a curriculum-based science assessment. Results: Controlling for verbal ability and age, mental folding (intrinsic-dynamic spatial ability), and spatial scaling (extrinsic-static spatial ability) each emerged as unique predictors of overall science scores, with mental folding a stronger predictor than spatial scaling. These spatial skills combined accounted for 8% of the variance in science scores. When considered by scientific discipline, mental folding uniquely predicted both physics and biology scores, and spatial scaling accounted for additional variance in biology and variance in chemistry scores. The children's embedded figures task (intrinsic-static spatial ability) only accounted for variance in chemistry scores. The patterns of association were consistent across the age range. Conclusion: Spatial skills, particularly mental folding, spatial scaling, and disembedding, are predictive of 7- to 11-year-olds' science achievement. These skills make a similar contribution to performance for each age group.

This paper attends to challenges for postsecondary science education improvement initiatives, notably understanding and responding to the realities guiding educators' teaching practices. We explored 16 postsecondary biology educators' instructional planning, providing novel insights into why educators select certain strategies over others, including lecturing. Our findings point to an array of factors that educators consider, factors that we believe push against the lecture versus active-learning dichotomy that we hear in some improvement rhetoric. We recommend professional development experiences (including peer evaluations of teaching) wherein educators and other proponents for teaching improvements explicitly explore rationales for teaching, including educators' considerations of the nature of the discipline (content and concepts and skills and processes) and students' needs. Educators with less experience with content were more likely to seek out additional instructional resources during planning, including other educators. Given this, teaching improvement proponents may want to offer professional development activities that sync with periodic and planned teaching assignments that take educators out of their disciplinary knowledge comfort zone. Disciplinary colleagues might serve as exemplars of planning and implementing teaching strategies that both convey foundational content and processes and engage students via evidence-based practices.

Many efforts to improve science teaching in higher education focus on a few faculty members at an institution at a time, with limited published evidence on attempts to engage faculty across entire departments. We created a long-term, department-wide collaborative professional development program, Biology Faculty Explorations in Scientific Teaching (Biology FEST). Across 3 years of Biology FEST, 89% of the department's faculty completed a weeklong scientific teaching institute, and 83% of eligible instructors participated in additional semester-long follow-up programs. A semester after institute completion, the majority of Biology FEST alumni reported adding active learning to their courses. These instructor self-reports were corroborated by audio analysis of classroom noise and surveys of students in biology courses on the frequency of active-learning techniques used in classes taught by Biology FEST alumni and nonalumni. Three years after Biology FEST launched, faculty participants overwhelmingly reported that their teaching was positively affected. Unexpectedly, most respondents also believed that they had improved relationships with departmental colleagues and felt a greater sense of belonging to the department. Overall, our results indicate that biology department-wide collaborative efforts to develop scientific teaching skills can indeed attract large numbers of faculty, spark widespread change in teaching practices, and improve departmental relations.

The mathematical preparedness of science undergraduates has been a subject of debate for some time. This paper investigates the relationship between school mathematics attainment and degree outcomes in biology and chemistry across England, a much larger scale of analysis than has hitherto been reported in the literature. A unique dataset which links the National Pupil Database for England (NPD) and Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data is used to track the educational trajectories of a national cohort of 16-year olds through their school and degree programmes. Multilevel regression models indicate that students who completed advanced mathematics qualifications prior to their university study of biology and chemistry were no more likely to attain the best degree outcomes than those without advanced mathematics. The models do, however, suggest that success in advanced chemistry at school predicts outcomes in undergraduate biology and vice versa. There are important social background differences and the impact of the university attended is considerable. We discuss a range of possible explanations of these findings.

Carbon cycling is a key natural system that requires robust science literacy to understand how and why climate change is occurring. Studies show that students tend to compartmentalize carbon movement within plants and animals and are challenged to make sense of how carbon cycles on a global scale. Studies also show that students hold faulty models of climate change which thwart their reasoning about how and why climate change occurs. Very few studies have examined how to support students in understanding carbon cycling and reasoning about the relationships between carbon cycling and climate change. To support secondary students in making these connections, we developed a modeling-centered socio-scientific issue (SSI) based curriculum unit taught by the same teacher across three sections of a secondary biology class. At three time points within the 2-week unit, 50 students developed, used, evaluated, and revised their own carbon cycling models to use as sense-making tools for how individual biological processes create a global carbon system and the relationship between carbon cycling and climate change. A small subset of students (n = 16) were also interviewed about their models. We constructed holistic scoring rubrics to document students' model-based reasoning associated with each model and then compared rubric scores across time points to examine potential progression of model-based reasoning over the course of the unit. Results suggest that students' must hold a robust understanding of causal mechanisms for transfer and transformation of carbon in order to make connections between carbon cycling and climate change. Once their understanding of carbon cycling becomes robust, their reasoning shifts in complexity to understand interrelationships between carbon cycling and climate change. Implications from this study suggest that embedding the practices of modeling within a SSI unit supported secondary students in building robust understanding of carbon cycling and the interrelationship to climate change.

Multiple reports highlight the increasingly quantitative nature of biological research and the need to innovate means to ensure that students acquire quantitative skills. We present a tool to support such innovation. The Biological Science Quantitative Reasoning Exam (BioSQuaRE) is an assessment instrument designed to measure the quantitative skills of undergraduate students within a biological context. The instrument was developed by an interdisciplinary team of educators and aligns with skills included in national reports such as "BIO2010, Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians," and "Vision and Change." Undergraduate biology educators also confirmed the importance of items included in the instrument. The current version of the BioSQuaRE was developed through an iterative process using data from students at 12 postsecondary institutions. A psychometric analysis of these data provides multiple lines of evidence for the validity of inferences made using the instrument. Our results suggest that the BioSQuaRE will prove useful to faculty and departments interested in helping students acquire the quantitative competencies they need to successfully pursue biology, and useful to biology students by communicating the importance of quantitative skills. We invite educators to use the BioSQuaRE at their own institutions.

This study investigated how the frequency and level of assistance provided to students interacted with prior knowledge to affect learning in the "Voyage to Galapagos" ("VTG") science inquiry-learning environment. "VTG" provides students with the opportunity to do simulated science field work in Galapagos as they investigate the key biology principles of variation, biological function, and natural selection. Thirteen teachers used the "VTG" module during their Natural Selection and Evolution curriculum unit. Students (N = 1728) were randomly assigned to one of four assistance conditions (Minimal-, Medium-, Medium-High, or High-Assistance). We predicted we would find an "Expertise Reversal Effect" (Kalyuga et al. in "Edu Psychol Rev" 194:509-539, 2007), whereby students with little prior knowledge benefit from assistance and students with higher prior knowledge benefit from minimal assistance. However, initial analyses revealed no interaction between prior knowledge and condition on student learning. To further explore results, we grouped students into 5 clusters based on student behaviors recorded during the use of "VTG." The effect of assistance conditions within these clusters showed that, in two of the five clusters, results were consistent with the Expertise Reversal Effect. However, in two other clusters, the effect was reversed such that students with low prior knowledge benefited from lower amounts of assistance and vice versa. Though this study has not identified which specific characteristics determine optimal assistance levels, it suggests that prior knowledge is not sufficient for determining when students will differentially benefit from assistance. We propose that other factors such as self-regulated learning should be investigated in future research.

For over 4 decades, educational researchers have been studying best practices for introducing writing into the curriculum. One successful strategy, a low-stakes writing exercise called "writing to learn" (WTL), has been implemented across several disciplines within higher education. In light of a growing interest in the use of technology and social media as an influential tool in the educational environment, we ask this question: "Does the source material used to prepare for WTL activities impact student learning and knowledge retention?" To address this question, we studied student performance on WTL exercises (in microbiology and introductory biology) that were based on material presented via (a) media (news videos, Podcasts, or YouTube) or (b) written articles and transcripts. Although our analysis did not indicate a significant effect of media use on students' ability to understand and retain new information, we discuss the implications of our findings and the limitations underscored by the very intent of WTL activities in doing such pedagogical work. This study offers insight into the implementation of WTL activities, particularly in the natural sciences, and demonstrates the value of such practices.

Collaborative learning in small groups is commonly implemented as a part of student-centered curricula. In large-enrollment courses, details of the interactions among students as a consequence of working in collaborative groups are often unknown but are important because how students interact influences the effectiveness of peer learning. We monitored the interactions of students during a semester in a large-enrollment evolutionary biology class using social network analysis. We discovered that contrary to the expectation separate groups would persist in the classroom, a single large network emerged relatively quickly. The coalescence of all students into a single network largely reflects the effect of individuals that frequently changed groups. Performance in the class--measured by the total number of points accumulated during the semester--was influenced by a student's degree centrality, sex, GPA, and attendance and by an interaction between GPA and sex. Our study and others highlight the potential of social network analysis for advancing education and educational research.

Habituation is a non-associative form of learning characterized by a decremented response to repeated stimulation. It is typically framed as a process of selective attention, allowing animals to ignore irrelevant stimuli in order to free up limited cognitive resources. However, habituation can also occur to threatening and toxic stimuli, suggesting that habituation may serve other functions. Here we took advantage of a high-throughput "Caenorhabditis elegans" learning assay to investigate habituation to noxious stimuli. Using real-time computer vision software for automated behavioral tracking and optogenetics for controlled activation of a polymodal nociceptor, ASH, we found that neuropeptides mediated habituation and performed an RNAi screen to identify candidate receptors. Through subsequent mutant analysis and cell-type-specific gene expression, we found that pigment-dispersing factor (PDF) neuropeptides function redundantly to promote habituation via PDFR-1-mediated cAMP signaling in both neurons and muscles. Behavioral analysis during learning acquisition suggests that response habituation and sensitization of locomotion are parts of a shifting behavioral strategy orchestrated by pigment dispersing factor signaling to promote dispersal away from repeated aversive stimuli.

Bioinformatics--the so-called shotgun marriage between biology and computer science--is an interdiscipline. Despite interdisciplinarity being seen as a virtue, for having the capacity to solve complex problems and foster innovation, it has the potential to place projects and people in anomalous categories. For example, valorised "outputs" in academia are often defined and rewarded by discipline. Bioinformatics, as an interdisciplinary bricolage, incorporates experts from various disciplinary cultures with their own distinct ways of working. Perceived problems of interdisciplinarity include difficulties of making explicit knowledge that is practical, theoretical, or cognitive. But successful interdisciplinary research also depends on an understanding of disciplinary cultures and value systems, often only tacitly understood by members of the communities in question. In bioinformatics, the "parent" disciplines have different value systems; for example, what is considered worthwhile research by computer scientists can be thought of as trivial by biologists, and "vice versa." This paper concentrates on the problems of reward and recognition described by scientists working in academic bioinformatics in the United Kingdom. We highlight problems that are a consequence of its cross-cultural make-up, recognising that the mismatches in knowledge in this borderland take place not just at the level of the practical, theoretical, or epistemological, but also at the cultural level, too. The trend in big, interdisciplinary science is towards multiple authors on a single paper; in bioinformatics this has created "hybrid" or "fractional" scientists who find they are being positioned not just in-between established disciplines but also in-between as middle authors or, worse still, left off papers altogether.

Informal learning settings such as museums have been identified as opportunities to enhance students' knowledge and motivation in science and to optimize the connection between science and everyday life. The present study assessed the role of a self-paced science education program (situated in a medical science museum) in enhancing students' program-related content knowledge, self-efficacy, valuing, and aspirations. The study also investigated whether gains in content knowledge recall and motivation (as relevant to biology, anatomy, health) are associated with reported improvements in beliefs about health practices relevant to everyday life. The program aligned with a well-established tripartite engagement framework conforming to cognitive, behavioral, and emotional engagement principles as well as principles underpinning guided discovery learning. Among a sample of N = 167 (upper) elementary and secondary school students (aged 10-16 years, M = 12.62 years), we found significant gains in content knowledge recall (achievement) and science motivation (self-efficacy, valuing, aspirations) following participation in the science program. Additionally, gains in content knowledge recall and motivation were associated with reported improvements in beliefs about everyday health practices.

Young people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have a high prevalence (~40 %) of anxiety disorders compared to their non-ASD peers. It is unclear whether cognitive and biological processes associated with anxiety in ASD are analogous to anxiety in typically developing (TD) populations. In this study 55 boys with ASD (34 with a co-occurring anxiety disorder, 21 without) and 28 male controls, aged 10-16 years and with a full-scale IQ = 70, completed a series of clinical, cognitive (attention bias/interpretation bias) and biological measures (salivary cortisol/HR response to social stress) associated with anxiety in TD populations. Structural equation modelling was used to reveal that that both attentional biases and physiological responsiveness were significant, but unrelated, predictors of anxiety in ASD.

We examined whether adults with autism had difficulty imitating atypical biological kinematics. To reduce the impact that higher-order processes have on imitation we used a non-human agent model to control social attention, and removed end-state target goals in half of the trials to minimise goal-directed attention. Findings showed that only neurotypical adults imitated atypical biological kinematics. Adults with autism did, however, become significantly more accurate at imitating movement time. This confirmed they engaged in the task, and that sensorimotor adaptation was self-regulated. The attentional bias to movement time suggests the attenuation in imitating kinematics might be a compensatory strategy due to deficits in lower-level visuomotor processes associated with self-other mapping, or selective attention modulated the processes that represent biological kinematics.

Research Findings: Evolution by natural selection is often relegated to the high school curriculum on the assumption that younger students cannot grasp its complexity. We sought to test that assumption by teaching children ages 4-12 (n = 96) a selection-based explanation for biological adaptation and comparing their success to that of adults (n = 30). Participants provided explanations before and after a 10-min, analogy-based tutorial illustrating the principles of variation, differential survival, differential reproduction, inheritance, and population change. Although younger children (ages 4-6) showed minimal evidence of learning these principles, older children (ages 7-12) showed robust evidence of doing so, learning them at rates equivalent to adults. Participants of all ages, however, provided nonevolutionary explanations for biological adaptations (i.e., explanations referencing need, growth, and creation) nearly as often at posttest as they did at pretest. Practice or Policy: These results suggest that older elementary school-age children can be taught evolutionary concepts but that learning such concepts does not lead to the automatic replacement of nonevolutionary views of biological adaptation, which must be addressed separately.

Teachers are being challenged to engage students in ways that will elevate student interest and understanding of concepts in science and encourage students to gather evidence to support what we know about science. It is critical for teachers to have budget-friendly, supporting activities that are aligned with current educational standards, that are easy to present, and that incorporate a variety of skills important to the study of science. This simulation activity is an inexpensive exercise that challenges students to hypothesize the evolutionary outcome of genotype selection in a population and then gather and analyze a set of unique data. Connections to recent evolutionary changes in familiar organisms ground the activity for students, helping them grasp the importance of such investigative work.

Two methods for the extraction of maltol from Fraser fir needles are performed and compared in this two-week experiment. A traditional benchtop extraction using dichloromethane is compared to a microwave-assisted extraction using aqueous ethanol. Students perform both procedures and weigh the merits of each technique. In doing so, students see a trade-off between the ease of working with a highly volatile organic solvent and the selectivity that can be achieved with the greener solvent combination. This experiment combines multiple lab techniques, highlights the connections between chemistry and biology, and provides straightforward [superscript 1]H NMR spectra to support the introduction of spectroscopy in first-semester organic chemistry.