In the realm of agricultural development, the pursuit of sustainability stands as a paramount objective, necessitating an integration of multifaceted expertise from diverse disciplines. Amidst this pursuit, understanding the perspectives of professionals in both the realms of economy and biology becomes imperative, serving as a cornerstone for…

Inquiry-based course experiences provide a scalable and equitable way to engage students in research. In this study, we describe how we introduced inquiry-based experiences to ten lower-division and upper-division courses across the biology curriculum at a regionally comprehensive public university serving the diverse population in a major…

Photosynthesis is the predominant metabolic process for energy obtention in plants. Here we describe a case study where a set of anatomical, biochemical, and molecular characters are used to reconstruct the evolution of the C[subscript 4] photosynthetic pathway, within the evolutionary framework provided by the genus "Flaveria." Our main…

Science should provide students an accurate and contemporary education on genetic influence, particularly how it impacts trait variability and developmental norms. Stories involving familial, racial, and sexual differences routinely appear in the popular media and sales of over-the-counter genetic tests are mounting. Unfortunately, research…

Even highly motivated undergraduates drift off their STEM career pathways. In large introductory STEM classes, instructors struggle to identify and support these students. To address these issues, we developed co-redesign methods in partnership with disciplinary experts to create high-structure STEM courses that better support students and produce…

Small institutions struggle to balance class size with financial feasibility, leading to canceled electives due to low enrollment. This study reports the preliminary data of a mixed-majors class intended to overcome the minimum enrollment hurdle. Animal Behavior was an upper-level course emphasizing engagement and shared learning. I examined…

Background: Institutions of higher learning are persistently struggling with issues of academic dishonesty such as plagiarism, despite the availability of university policies and guidelines for upholding academic integrity. Methodology: This was a descriptive qualitative study conducted on 37 students of a Healthcare Ethics course at an Australian…

This study investigated how pre-service biology teachers perceived the concepts of 'system' -- as the basic component of the systems thinking approach -- and 'biological system' specific to biology. The most important characteristics of a system appear as elements, interactions, interconnections, hierarchy, purpose and forming a whole. The data of…

Purpose: Despite numerous kinds of research regarding the potential of lesson study (LS) in internship and microteaching in teacher education curricula, studies examining the adaptation of LS in the lesson planning (LP) course have not been established. To fill this gap, this study aims to explore the perceptions of pre-service biology teachers of…

Online peer feedback has proven to be practically useful for instructors and to be useful for learning, especially for the feedback provider. Because students can vary widely in skill level, some research has explored matching reviewer and author by performance level. However, past research on the impacts of reviewer matching has found little…

A key concept in current fluid dynamics and its applications to biology and technology is a phenomenon known as wetting. Wetting is familiar from everyday life and is simply the ability of a liquid to stay in contact with a solid surface. The wettability depends on the properties of the liquid and the solid and can be characterized by the static…

Sleep disturbance has harmful psychological and physical effects and due to a range of biopsychosocial and environmental factors, university students are at an increased risk. Despite the importance of this topic, it is under-researched, especially in the UK. The objectives of this study were (1) to investigate the occurrence and nature of sleep…

Explaining biological phenomena requires understanding how different processes function and describing interactions between components at various levels of organization over time and space in biological systems. This is a desired competency yet is a complicated and often challenging task for undergraduate biology students. Therefore, we need a…

Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) are attractive solutions for scaling undergraduate research experiences at primarily undergraduate teaching institutions, where resources for faculty research activities can be limited. The Sustainable Interdisciplinary Research to Inspire Undergraduate Success (SIRIUS) project is a unique…

Despite decades of prior research, the mechanisms of skilled reading development remain elusive. Numerous studies have identified word recognition and oral language ability as key components to explain later reading comprehension performance. However, these components alone do not fully explain differences in reading achievement. There is ongoing…