Background: Undergraduate research experiences are becoming essential for pursuing future opportunities in science, but little has been done to identify what factors predict which students get to participate in research and which students do not. In this manuscript, we propose "scientific research capital" and specifically…

Recent research has begun to explore the experiences of Christian undergraduates and faculty in biology to illuminate reasons for their underrepresentation. In this study, we focused on the experiences of graduate students and explored Christianity as a concealable stigmatized identity (CSI) in the biology community. We constructed interview…

Student enrollments in online college courses have grown steadily over the past decade, and college administrators expect this trend to continue or accelerate. Despite the growing popularity of online education, one major critique in the sciences is that students are not trained in the hands-on skills they may need for the workforce, graduate…

Bioethics is an important aspect of understanding the relationship between science and society, but studies have not yet examined undergraduate student experiences and comfort in bioethics courses. In this study, we investigated undergraduate bioethics students' support of and comfort when learning three controversial bioethics topics: gene…

Evolution is one of the most important concepts in biology, but it is rejected by a substantial percentage of religious students due to a perceived conflict with their religious beliefs. The use of religious cultural competence in evolution education (ReCCEE) has been shown to effectively increase evolution acceptance among religious students…

Syllabi are usually required by institutions of higher education and often are the first exposure that students have to a particular course. Instructors can use syllabi as a mechanism to convey important information to students. Moreover, a syllabus can be considered a tool to create inclusive biology courses by transmitting information to all…

Hundreds of articles have explored the extent to which individuals accept evolution, and the Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE) is the most often used survey. However, research indicates the MATE has limitations, and it has not been updated since its creation more than 20 years ago. In this study, we revised the MATE using…

Evolution is controversial among students and religiosity, religious affiliation, understanding of evolution, and demographics are predictors of evolution acceptance. However, quantitative research has not explored the unique impact of student perceived conflict between their religion and evolution as a major factor influencing evolution…

The "Vision and Change" report called for the biology community to mobilize around teaching the core concepts of biology. This essay describes a collection of resources developed by several different groups that can be used to respond to the report's call to transform undergraduate education at both the individual course and departmental…

Although many scientists agree that evolution does not make claims about God/god(s), students might assume that evolution is atheistic, and this may lead to lower evolution acceptance. In study 1, we surveyed 1081 college biology students at one university about their religiosity and evolution acceptance and asked what religious ideas someone…

The "Vision and Change" report provides a nationally agreed upon framework of core concepts that undergraduate biology students should master by graduation. While identifying these concepts was an important first step, departments also need ways to measure the extent to which students understand these concepts. Here, we present the…

In laboratory study environments, dialogue-videos, or videos of a tutor and a tutee solving problems together, have been shown to more effectively improve student learning than monologue-videos, or videos of tutors solving problems alone. Yet, few studies have replicated these findings in the context of authentic university classrooms. Here, we…

Evolution remains a controversial issue in the United States, particularly for evangelical Christians, who as a group have been a key player in anti-evolution education legislation. Religious cultural competence can be effective in decreasing undergraduate biology students' perceived conflict between religion and evolution. However, the impact on…

Low acceptance of evolution among undergraduate students is common and is best predicted by religious beliefs. Decreasing students' perceived conflict between religion and evolution could increase their acceptance of evolution. However, college biology instructors may struggle with trying to decrease students' perceived conflict between religion…

College instructors in the United States usually make their own decisions about how to design course exams. Even though summative course exams are well known to be important to student success, we know little about the decision making of instructors when designing course exams. To probe how instructors design exams for introductory biology, we…