Growing calls in science education reform have emphasized wide-scale engagement of first-year undergraduate students in authentic research experiences; however, large course enrollments, inadequate student experience, limited resources and departmental inertia often create obstacles to reaching this goal. To help overcome these obstacles, the Department of Biology at James Madison University (JMU) has developed a cost-effective, scalable, and transferable semester-long (14-week) course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) designed for large enrollment introductory biology labs. In this series of labs, first-year students use DNA barcoding to engage in authentic research practices drawn from the fields of ecology, molecular biology, and bioinformatics. These labs enable students to identify local species of plants, fungi, and invertebrates using student-generated DNA barcode sequences, which are then shared through a public database. Since their implementation at JMU in 2016, students in these labs have created and shared over 1,500 unique DNA barcode sequences and documented over 300 local species of plants, fungi, and invertebrates. These data are being used in an ongoing project comparing the biodiversity of forest edge versus forest interior habitats, but the labs are adaptable to almost any habitat or taxonomic group. In this article, we provide detailed descriptions of the content, logistics, and implementation of this 14-week series of labs. To our knowledge, this is among the largest-enrollment CUREs being offered to first-year undergraduates in the United States, and we hope that it can be useful to other institutions interested in documenting biodiversity and engaging introductory biology students in authentic research.

Educational games are one active and effective way of engaging students with material while also providing additional motivation to tackle challenging concepts. A particularly popular game concept is the escape room, where students need to work in groups to solve a series of puzzles to prevent disaster from occurring in an imaginary universe, all within a specified amount of time. This paper presents a general guide to constructing an escape room for undergraduate classrooms. Unlike many recently published educational escape rooms, this template does not use any laboratory-based components, making it widely applicable to any class and any level, although it will be most easily adapted to classes that do include analytical components. The puzzles in the game escalate from remembering and understanding concepts to applying and evaluating techniques and data. Unlike many other games and puzzles, an escape room does not reveal the final answers until the allocated time is up, which forces students to work through challenging questions and find solutions within their group to advance in the game. The game provides students many instances for formative assessment and encourages helpful discussions surrounding misconceptions and core course content while they escalate through the challenges.

Using CO2 emissions data, students will learn how to visualize data with Tableau Public. The teaching materials are suitable for upper-level undergraduate courses on data analysis and research methods in Environmental Sciences and Studies.

In this lesson students embark upon a journey through the many ways we come to know a watershed, with foci on its physical geography and our embodied perceptions. This enables students to formulate a holistic understanding of the value of watersheds, situating any future discipline-specific foci within a broad understanding of what watersheds mean to humanity. Required site conditions are simply the bank of any river or stream channel. Equipment needs are minimal. Written data is collected in notebooks. The “data” will address questions of geography and philosophy, such as “what are the physical components of a watershed?” and “what are the roles of humanity in regard to rivers?” This lesson has broad applicability across different regions. It complements quantitative scientific river-based field lessons by actively grounding students’ understanding of humanity’s inherent subjectivity in their perceptions of rivers. The intent of this lesson is to engage with subjectivity, connecting students with the riverine place they are in through an exploration of their perceptions and feelings, ultimately deepening their relationships with rivers and places.

This lesson introduces students to field methods and theoretical concepts regarding the factors that shape river environments and ecosystems. Introductory material is followed by instruction in the Wolman Pebble Count and the Equation of Entrainment.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge is based on deep understanding of systems from observations made over hundreds to thousands of years. This resource connects Traditional Ecological Knowledge to modern conservation through media and primary literature interpretation. The adaptation of this research aims to link the material to the ecological concept of the intermediate disturbance hypothesis and to highlight ecologists whose careers have focused on the concept.

This series of self-paced tutorials show how to analyze data using a spreadsheet program.

Genome Solver began as a way to teach undergraduate faculty some basic skills in bioinformatics; no coding or scripting is required. Lesson II introduces the principal databases for microbial genomics.

The "Introduction to BLAST using Human Leptin" exercise aims to introduce students to the use of the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) to identify related sequences and compare similarity between them.

The students will practice identifying the appropriate basic statistical tests when given a scenario and learn how to run and interpret those statistical tests in R.

This is an introduction to bioinformatics using hemoglobin as an example. The worksheets introduce students to resources to explore the DNA, RNA and polypeptide linear structure with a brief introduction to the quaternary structure of hemoglobin.

Biomolecular structure and function is emphasized as a core concept in a variety of community determined educational standards for biology and chemistry. Most curricula introduce students to the building blocks and principles of biomolecular structures, in introductory chapters of biology, biochemistry, cell biology, and chemistry courses, but very few engage students in actively visualizing and exploring biomolecular structures throughout the course. Conversations with faculty teaching introductory courses, and/or developing and piloting molecular case studies, helped uncover the need for new resources, and professional development to support introduction of biomolecular exploration. To address this need, a group of faculty participating in a Faculty Mentoring Network in Spring 2022, gathered together resources and lessons that they had independently developed and collaboratively developed additional ones. An overview of the lessons will be presented here. Interested users are invited to pilot the lessons in Fall 2022.

This resource promotes inclusive learning by using all free platforms to extend the central dogma to an applied experience. Genomics is focused on with literature reviews that are performed to identify genes implicated in a clinical condition. Transcriptomics with data mining of RNAseq acquisition is followed by protein sequence acquisition and modeling. Teaching and learning of communication in the process of science is the final focus.

This resource promotes inclusive learning by using all free platforms to extend the central dogma to an applied experience. Genomics is focused on with literature reviews that are performed to identify genes implicated in a clinical condition. Transcriptomics with data mining of RNAseq acquisition is followed by protein sequence acquisition and modeling. Teaching and learning of communication in the process of science is the final focus.

This is a poster describing a collection of open educational resources that were developed by faculty participating in the Molecular CaseNet Faculty Mentoring Network in Spring 2022. The collection was then reviewed and piloted and is now ready for publishing.

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.

The aim of this project is to help undergraduates understand the importance of making their research accessible to a wide audience and to practice this idea by deliberately designing a scientific poster that is accessible to a more inclusive audience.

Meet Dr. Rachel Hackett, a conservation plant biologist at the Michigan Natural Features Inventory.  We learn about Rachel's job and the restoration of threatened and endangered species. Rachel provides some examples of "new" populations and students discuss ways to determine if the population is a remnant or introduced population. 

Meet Lauren Esposito, the Curator of Arachnology at the California Academy of Sciences. Learn how they use community science to inform new species discovery.

Meet Diane Srivastava, director of the Canadian Institute for Ecology and Evolution, and learn how they sythesize and save biodiversity data.

Meet Thomas McElrath, a insect collection manager at the Illinois Natural History Survey and beetle researcher. Tommy explains the value of data standards while discussing beetles and variations in sex.

Resources I’ve created and contributed art towards.

Students who are directly involved in scientific activities develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of both scientific knowledge and the scientific process. This understanding is critically important in scientific areas like climate change that are the focus of global public and political debate. Toward this end, we used a publicly available atmospheric carbon dioxide modeling activity in a non-major biology course to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of climate change science. This activity steps students through the development of a basic model of carbon flow between the land, the atmosphere, and the ocean. Students manipulate components of the model to optimize the model based on known data. The model is then used to make predictions for future atmospheric carbon dioxide under scenarios that the students generate and test. For the initial implementation of this lab, pre/post assessment questions evaluated the student's confidence in science and general science knowledge, as well as gauged the usefulness of this class activity. Assessment data and student feedback indicated that the students enjoyed this activity and learned about climate change dynamics and also about the climate change modeling process.

In this lab, you will explore the physics of flight, the adaptations that make powered flight possible, and the evolution of powered flight in vertebrates and invertebrates.