Collaborative Research: Using protein function prediction to promote hypothesis-driven thinking in undergraduate biochemistry education

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Recognizing the national need for significant improvement in undergraduate STEM education, collaborators from six institutions (Rochester Institute of Technology, St. Mary's University, Oral Roberts University, Hope College, Ursinus College, and California Polytechnic University) will explore a new approach to introduce students to authentic research in biochemistry laboratory courses. The project will test the hypotheses that engaging in authentic research will improve students' abilities to master key aspects of experimentation (experimental design, data processing and interpretation, and communication of research outcomes) and visualization (use of representations to communicate various aspects of the research process). The project is likely to be transferrable to other institutions, and is an example of a cost-effective way to introduce course-based research into the undergraduate curriculum.Biochemistry laboratory courses will be redesigned to include modules in which students will integrate computational and wet lab techniques as they characterize proteins whose three dimensional structures are known but to which functions have not been previously ascribed. Because the project is focused on discovery, it is reasonable to expect that some of the students will produce novel results that will contribute to the field of biochemistry. Formative and summative evaluation will address assessment of student learning gains in terms of improved conceptual understanding and visualization of experiments using a validated instrument composed of open-ended and closed-ended questions. Faculty members and teaching assistants will be surveyed and interviewed about their satisfaction with the project, its usability, and the extent to which they see the project as part of their own and their students' development. The project team will create and disseminate modules (promol.org) that form the core of a new curriculum for undergraduate biochemistry laboratory courses. The results of the work will be presented at professional meetings, such as the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and submitted to scholarly journals.