Problem-based Learning Modules for Systems Biology

对于本科院校来说，开发促进跨学科融合的教材的任务尤其具有挑战性，因为这些院校的教学负担如此之高，以至于教职员工发现很难跟上各自领域的新发展，更不用说在集成系统生物学等跨学科的新领域了。该项目的目标是创建全面的教材，帮助全国的教师进入综合系统生物学领域，教育学生，并让他们参与基于系统的跨学科生物学研究。通过编写拟议的材料，该项目将为培养现有和未来的教师，包括博士后研究员和年轻科学家奠定基础。这一战略预计将产生巨大的乘数效应，并将赋予那些原本可能无法从事综合系统生物学跨学科领域的教师的权力。在综合系统生物学的新领域，对教材的需求非常迫切，特别是在本科院校，那里的教员几乎没有时间开发新的课程，这些课程需要几个不同的家长学科的知识。将开发的材料包括讲座幻灯片、项目、练习、作业问题、解决方案、背景材料、不同语言的计算机代码，以及其他简化为来自STEM教育不同领域的教师开发综合系统生物学课程的材料。拟议的材料将在佐治亚理工学院进行开发和阿尔法测试。随后的贝塔测试将在斯佩尔曼学院进行，该学院历史上一直是一所少数族裔学校，主要迎合来自代表性不足群体的女学生。随后，这些教学模块将在其他学院进一步测试。

The task of developing educational materials that foster interdisciplinary integration is especially challenging for undergraduate colleges where the teaching load is so high that faculty find it difficult to keep up with new developments in their own fields, let alone in new discipline-spanning fields such as integrative systems biology. The goal of this project is to create fully comprehensive educational materials that will help faculty nationwide enter the field of integrative systems biology, educate students, and engage them in interdisciplinary systems-based biological research. By developing the proposed materials, the project will lay the foundation for educating current and future teachers, including postdoctoral fellows and young scientists. This strategy is anticipated to have an enormous multiplier effect and will empower instructors who might otherwise not be able to engage in the transdisciplinary field of integrative systems biology.There is a pressing need for educational materials in the new field of integrative systems biology, in particular at undergraduate colleges where faculty have little time to develop new courses that require knowledge of several distinct parent disciplines. The materials to be developed consist of lecture slides, projects, exercises, homework problems, solutions, background materials, computer code in different languages, and other materials that simplify the development of integrative systems biology courses for faculty that come from different fields of STEM education. The proposed materials will be developed and alpha-tested at Georgia Institute of Technology. Subsequent beta-testing will occur at Spelman College, historically known as a minority institution that primarily caters to female students from underrepresented groups. Subsequently the teaching modules will be further tested at other colleges.