Collaborative Research: BIO IUSE Ideas Lab: Supporting Faculty in Quantitative Undergraduate Biology Education and Synthesis (QUBES)

在国家科学基金会改善本科生STEM教育(IUSE)计划的资助下，该项目满足了国家日益增长的需求，即更好地培养本科生生物学家，掌握在工作场所或研究生院取得成功所需的量化和计算技能。将数学推理技能完全融入本科生物课堂一直是具有挑战性的，部分原因是许多生物学科的快速变化和学术奖励制度往往忽视了教学发展和研究。定量本科生物学教育与合成(QUBES)项目中的支持学院涉及五个相互依赖的倡议，以促进整个生物科学课程中定量和计算技能的整合。该项目通过协调已经参与量化生物教育改革的不同群体的努力和资源，正在现有社区的投资基础上再接再厉。这种方法使Qube能够放大专业协会和专业课程项目等组织的优势，同时简化沟通和协调，以培养更广泛的数量生物学(QB)领域具有改革思想的教师教育工作者社区。辅导网络将被用来支持教师理解和课堂上实施特定的数量生物学概念和教学策略。这些辅导网络将由包含定量和教学专业知识的团队领导，并将为分布在空间上的教员群体提供服务，这些教员群体在改革其目前的教学做法方面有着共同的兴趣。参与的讲师将在他们自己的机构内传播资源，组织新的指导网络，并在他们的专业协会中发挥领导作用。这些合作的产品将作为Qube Hub的一部分进行捕获，Qube Hub是一个虚拟环境，为所有QB教育工作者提供专业支持活动和访问课程资源。为了应对记录教学奖学金的挑战，QUBES项目还试行了一个系统，用于描述和跟踪教师对QB教育社区的贡献。这项高风险、但可能具有变革性的举措，旨在制定有意义的教学奖学金指标，可能会对不同类型机构的学术奖励制度产生长期影响。通过加强QB研究和开发工具，该项目正在丰富该学科，并在STEM教育中催化长期的学术文化变革。最后，合作伙伴正在研究和传播他们所了解到的关于这一教育改革努力的有效性。这项研究将采用系统的方法，在影响教育改革成功的因素的复杂图景中，确定有效的干预措施和变革的障碍。要有效地执行和管理这种复杂程度的项目，需要进行彻底和持续的评估。项目组在整个项目活动中嵌入数据收集系统，以近乎实时的方式跟踪进度、有效管理资源，并在相互连接的项目组成部分之间保持清晰的沟通。QUBES的实施、研究和发展方法有望对全国的QB教育产生重大影响，更广泛地说，将为系统性的STEM教育改革努力提供信息。该项目由生物科学局和教育与人力资源局本科教育司联合资助，以支持应对《展望与改变本科教育：行动号召》中提出的挑战的努力

With funding from the National Science Foundation's Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program, this project addresses the Nation's growing need to better prepare undergraduate biologists with the quantitative and computational skills needed to be successful in the workplace or in graduate school. The full integration of mathematical reasoning skills into undergraduate biology classrooms has been challenging, in part, because of the rapid pace of change in many biological disciplines and an academic reward system that often overlooks pedagogical development and research.The Supporting Faculty in Quantitative Undergraduate Biology Education and Synthesis (QUBES) project involves five interdependent initiatives that promote the integration of quantitative and computational skills across the biological sciences curriculum. The project is building on the investments of existing communities by coordinating the efforts and resources of diverse groups that are already involved in quantitative biology education reform. This approach allows QUBES to amplify the strengths of organizations like professional societies and specialized curriculum projects while streamlining the communications and coordination required to grow broader community of reform-minded faculty educators in quantitative biology (QB). Mentoring networks will be used to support faculty understanding and classroom implementation of specific quantitative biology concepts and teaching strategies. These mentoring networks will be led by teams containing both quantitative and pedagogical expertise and will serve spatially distributed groups of instructors who share a common interest in reforming their current teaching practices. Participating instructors will disseminate resources within their own institutions, organize new mentoring networks, and take leadership roles in their professional societies. The products from these collaborations will be captured as part of the QUBES Hub, a virtual environment providing professional support activities and access to curriculum resources for all QB educators. In order to address the challenges of documenting teaching scholarship, the QUBES project is also piloting a system for describing and tracking faculty contributions to the QB education community. This high-risk, but potentially transformative, initiative to develop meaningful metrics of teaching scholarship could have a long term impact on academic reward systems across diverse institution types. By strengthening QB research and development tools, the project is enriching the discipline and catalyzing long-term academic cultural change across STEM education. Finally, the collaborative is studying and disseminating what they learn about the effectiveness of this educational reform effort. This research will take a systems approach to characterize effective interventions and barriers to change within the complex landscape of factors influencing the success of educational reform. The efficient execution and management of a project with this level of complexity requires thorough and ongoing evaluation. The project team is embedding data collection systems throughout project activities as a means to track progress in near real time, manage resources effectively, and maintain clear communication across connected project components. The QUBES approach to implementation, research, and development promises to have a significant impact on QB education across the nation and, more generally, to inform systemic STEM education reform efforts.This project is funded jointly by the Directorate for Biological Sciences and the Directorate of Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education in support of efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Education: A Call to Action http://visionandchange.org/finalreport/