Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have the potential to impact student success and reduce barriers for students to participate in undergraduate research. Literature review has revealed that, while CUREs are being implemented at both community colleges (CCs) and bachelor’s degree–granting institutions, there are limited published studies on the differential impacts CUREs may have on CC students in allied health programs, career and technical education, and nursing pathways (termed “workforce” in this essay). This essay summarizes proposed outcomes of CURE instruction and explores possible reasons for limited reporting on outcomes for CC and workforce students. It also provides recommendations to guide action and effect change regarding CURE implementation and assessment at CCs. This essay is a call to action to expand the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics career development pathway to include workforce students, implement CUREs designed for workforce students, and assess the differential impacts CUREs may have on workforce student populations at CCs.

A Call to Assess the Impacts of Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences for Career and Technical Education, Allied Health, and Underrepresented Students at Community Colleges

ABSTRACT The initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic changed the nature of course delivery from largely in-person to exclusively remote, thus disrupting the well-established pedagogy of the Genomics Education Partnership (GEP; https://www.thegep.org). However, our web-based research adapted well to the remote learning environment. As usual, students who engaged in the GEP’s Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) received digital projects based on genetic information within assembled Drosophila genomes. Adaptations for remote implementation included moving new member faculty training and peer Teaching Assistant office hours from in-person to online. Surprisingly, our faculty membership significantly increased and, hence, the number of supported students. Furthermore, despite the mostly virtual instruction of the 2020–2021 academic year, there was no significant decline in student learning nor attitudes. Based on successfully expanding the GEP CURE within a virtual learning environment, we provide four strategic lessons we infer toward democratizing science education. First, it appears that increasing access to scientific research and professional development opportunities by supporting virtual, cost-free attendance at national conferences attracts more faculty members to educational initiatives. Second, we observed that transitioning new member training to an online platform removed geographical barriers, reducing time and travel demands, and increased access for diverse faculty to join. Third, developing a Virtual Teaching Assistant program increased the availability of peer support, thereby improving the opportunities for student success. Finally, increasing access to web-based technology is critical for providing equitable opportunities for marginalized students to fully participate in research courses. Online CUREs have great potential for democratizing science education.

Supporting the democratization of science during a pandemic: genomics Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) as an effective remote learning strategy

ABSTRACT Over the last several years, nationally disseminated course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have emerged as an alternative to developing a novel CURE from scratch, but objective assessment of these multi-institution (network) CUREs across institutions is challenging due to differences in student populations, instructors, and fidelity of implementation. The time, money, and skills required to develop and validate a CURE-specific assessment instrument can be prohibitive. Here, we describe a co-design process for assessing a network CURE [the Prevalence of Antibiotic Resistance in the Environment (PARE)] that did not require support through external funding, was a relatively low time commitment for participating instructors, and resulted in a validated instrument that is usable across diverse PARE network institution types and implementation styles. Data collection efforts have involved over two dozen unique institutions, 42 course offerings, and over 1,300 pre-/post-matched assessment record data points. We demonstrated significant student learning gains but with small effect size in both content and science process skills after participation in the two laboratory sessions associated with the core PARE module. These results show promise for the efficacy of short-duration CUREs, an educational research area ripe for further investigation, and may support efforts to lower barriers for instructor adoption by leveraging a CURE network for developing and validating assessment tools.

A framework for leveraging network course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) faculty to develop, validate, and administer an assessment instrument

<ns3:p>Annotating the genomes of multiple species allows us to analyze the evolution of their genes. While many eukaryotic genome assemblies already include computational gene predictions, these predictions can benefit from review and refinement through manual gene annotation. The Genomics Education Partnership (GEP; <ns3:ext-link xmlns:ns4="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" ext-link-type="uri" ns4:href="https://thegep.org/">https://thegep.org/</ns3:ext-link>) developed a structural annotation protocol for protein-coding genes that enables undergraduate student and faculty researchers to create high-quality gene annotations that can be utilized in subsequent scientific investigations. For example, this protocol has been utilized by the GEP faculty to engage undergraduate students in the comparative annotation of genes involved in the insulin signaling pathway in 27 <ns3:italic>Drosophila</ns3:italic> species, using <ns3:italic>D. melanogaster</ns3:italic> as the reference genome. Students construct gene models using multiple lines of computational and empirical evidence including expression data (e.g., RNA-Seq), sequence similarity (e.g., BLAST and multiple sequence alignment), and computational gene predictions. Quality control measures require each gene be annotated by at least two students working independently, followed by reconciliation of the submitted gene models by a more experienced student. This article provides an overview of the annotation protocol and describes how discrepancies in student submitted gene models are resolved to produce a final, high-quality gene set suitable for subsequent analyses. The protocol can be adapted to other scientific questions (e.g., expansion of the <ns3:italic>Drosophila</ns3:italic> Muller F element) and species (e.g., parasitoid wasps) to provide additional opportunities for undergraduate students to participate in genomics research. These student annotation efforts can substantially improve the quality of gene annotations in publicly available genomic databases.</ns3:p> 

pdf/manual-annotation-of-drosophila-genes-a-genomics-education-2bxv3i1s0j.pdf

Manual annotation of Drosophila genes: a Genomics Education Partnership protocol

We examined the relationship between the levels of sophistication (high-sophisticated and low-sophisticated) of students’ domain general epistemic beliefs and an important component of students’ critical thinking skills—their ability to evaluate arguments. Participants evaluated arguments and took an epistemic belief survey before recalling arguments in a Surprise Recall task. Our findings suggest that students’ general beliefs about the speed of knowledge acquisition predicted how well they evaluated arguments and their memory for critical argument elements (i.e., claim-predicates). Implications of this connection between argument analysis and epistemic beliefs in the context of improving students’ critical thinking skills are discussed.

Knowing, Thinking, and Learning

The Genomics Education Partnership (GEP) engages students in a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE). To better understand the student attributes that support success in this CURE, we asked students about their attitudes using previously published scales that measure epistemic beliefs about work and science, interest in science, and grit. ABSTRACT The Genomics Education Partnership (GEP) engages students in a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE). To better understand the student attributes that support success in this CURE, we asked students about their attitudes using previously published scales that measure epistemic beliefs about work and science, interest in science, and grit. We found, in general, that the attitudes students bring with them into the classroom contribute to two outcome measures, namely, learning as assessed by a pre- and postquiz and perceived self-reported benefits. While the GEP CURE produces positive outcomes overall, the students with more positive attitudes toward science, particularly with respect to epistemic beliefs, showed greater gains. The findings indicate the importance of a student’s epistemic beliefs to achieving positive learning outcomes.

Student Attitudes Contribute to the Effectiveness of a Genomics CURE

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Student Attitudes Contribute to the Effectiveness of a Genomics CURE