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

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One of the fundamental challenges in STEM education is teaching students what it means to be a scientist. This project will demonstrate that engaging in hypothesis-driven experimental science is a powerful tool in educating students to become scientists. The objective of the project is to train students to think and act like scientists - to propose hypotheses, to design experiments, to analyze data, to draw conclusions, and to communicate with other scientists. Students on six campuses (Rochester Institute of Technology, Hope College, California Polytechnic Institute, Ursinus College, St. Mary's University, and SUNY Oswego) will engage in computational and wet lab approaches to predict protein function. In a previous project, the team of principal investigators created a series of modules to guide student inquiry and video instructions for the computational techniques, which were deployed in biochemistry teaching laboratories across the six campuses. In the present project, the faculty team will classify and characterize the research behaviors that students display during the course and will develop and validate methods for understanding students' development as scientists. Because the students are participating in authentic research, results from their experiments will also be collated into a database that can be used by future students to pursue biologically relevant protein functions, such as the potential discovery of drug targets for diseases.The primary purpose of the project is to introduce cutting-edge biochemistry research into the classroom to investigate whether getting students to participate in hypothesis-driven experimental science is a useful tool in educating students to become scientists. In this second phase of a course-based undergraduate research experience, students' learning and growth as scientists will be assessed by local biochemistry faculty and evaluated by educational researchers at Purdue University, to ascertain students' understanding of research methods, visualization, biological context, and mechanisms of protein function. The faculty team will develop validated assessment tools to measure these objectives, and will balance the homogeneity of curricular materials needed to ensure sound education with the flexibility needed for adaptation in different institutional settings. The course instructors and project evaluators will collaborate using education research techniques to monitor both students' development of research behaviors and changes in instructors' teaching approaches. The refined and tested curriculum will then be ready for wider dissemination into the biochemistry teaching community. The need for significant improvement in undergraduate STEM education and for the inclusion of a more diverse population is widely recognized. The project team includes faculty from a Hispanic-serving institution and from an institution with a large number of deaf and hard-of-hearing students; inclusion of these faculty ensures that the needs and concerns of these communities will be included in the project.