During the years 2020-2022, COVID-19-related restrictions led to fewer in-person lab offerings in Neuroscience and Biology courses, resulting in negative impacts on students' skills and confidence. In this study, we investigate the impact of a co-curricular undergraduate lab skills program, the Practical Skills Passport (PSP), on student lab…

Functional feeding guild classification of aquatic insects is partly based on mouthpart morphology, but the link between mouthpart morphology and ecological feeding roles is often missed by students in the classroom. We implemented a Jigsaw activity in a freshwater biology course to help students connect morphology and ecology. Paired students…

Research has shown that undergraduate research experiences can have substantive effects on retaining students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). However, it is impossible to provide individual research experiences for every undergraduate student, especially at large universities. Course-based undergraduate research…

The evolution of learning design continues, focusing on blended laboratory approaches incorporating technology. The Sophisticated Thinking Laboratory (STB-LAB) and Gather Town are key tools in implementing collaborative learning in this context. This study assesses the effectiveness of blended laboratory implementation using STB-LAB and Gather…

Information literacy refers to a set of skills that allow its user to find appropriate resources and use them to develop, define and defend arguments. In many undergraduate programms, including biology and STEM related fields, students are expected to utilise these skills in writing lab reports, paper analyses, and in developing testable…

The COVID-19 pandemic presented many challenges for educators. In Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs), where students learn about the scientific process by working on novel research, few resources for remote learning were available. Here the impact of changes to course delivery format on student learning gains in a…

Laboratory pedagogy is moving away from step-by-step instructions and toward inquiry-based learning, but only now developing methods for integrating inquiry-based writing (IBW) practices into the laboratory course. Based on an earlier proposal (Science 2011;332:919), we designed and implemented an IBW sequence in a university bioinformatics…

The purpose of the current study is to design and develop a sample Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) application addressing the anatomic structure of the heart in a way suitable for laboratory learning for pre-service science teachers to achieve learning by constructing information in biology instruction. The implementation of the MAR design activity…

Many studies have shown a decrease in scientific interest with an increase in age. Since interest is linked to a high degree of deep-level learning, it is of great relevance to foster interest in science. This study investigates interest in biology from 7th, 9th, and 12th grade students in Germany (N=257). Results show a significantly lower…

Course-based undergraduate research is promoted as an equitable strategy for providing the benefits of research experiences to a larger, more diverse population of students pursuing science degrees. Here, we report the impacts of course-based research on the self-efficacy and future goals of students enrolled in introductory biology courses at a…

St. Olaf College recently restructured its Summer Bridge Program (SBP) course for incoming low-income (LI) and first-generation (FG) college students from a non-major biology course, "Issues in Biology," to an interdisciplinary "Explorations in Science" course. Two significant changes were made with the intention of giving…

This study examines what students enrolled in the honors and general sections of a high school biology course offered at the same school learn when they have an opportunity to participate in a broad or narrow range of science practices during their laboratory experiences. The results of our analysis suggest that the students enrolled in the…

Community colleges enroll more than half of the undergraduate population in the United States, thereby retaining students of varying demographics with extracurricular demands differing from traditional four-year university students. Often in a collegiate lecture course, students are limited in their abilities to absorb and process information…

Leading voices in the biological sciences have called for a transformation in graduate education leading to the PhD degree. One area commonly singled out for growth and innovation is cross-training in computational science. In 1998, the University of Tennessee (UT) founded an intercollegiate graduate program called the UT-ORNL Graduate School of…

This paper describes the structure and activities of READ (Reading Effectively Across the Disciplines), a pilot initiative to improve students' critical reading skills, disciplinary literacy and academic success. READ employs a multimodal design that consists of faculty training in disciplinary literacy instruction and curricular enhancement,…