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

STEM教育的基本挑战之一是教会学生什么是科学家。这个项目将证明，从事假设驱动的实验科学是培养学生成为科学家的有力工具。该项目的目标是训练学生像科学家一样思考和行动--提出假设，设计实验，分析数据，得出结论，并与其他科学家交流。六个校区(罗切斯特理工学院、霍普学院、加州理工学院、乌尔辛斯学院、圣玛丽大学和纽约州立大学奥斯威戈分校)的学生将从事计算和湿实验室方法来预测蛋白质功能。在之前的一个项目中，主要研究团队创建了一系列模块来指导学生查询和视频指导计算技术，这些模块被部署在六个校区的生物化学教学实验室中。在本项目中，教师团队将对学生在课程中表现出的研究行为进行分类和表征，并将开发和验证理解学生作为科学家的发展的方法。由于学生们正在参与真实的研究，他们的实验结果也将被整理到一个数据库中，供未来的学生用来研究与生物相关的蛋白质功能，例如潜在的发现疾病的药物靶点。该项目的主要目的是将尖端的生物化学研究引入课堂，以调查让学生参与假设驱动的实验科学是否是教育学生成为科学家的有用工具。在以课程为基础的本科生研究体验的第二阶段，学生作为科学家的学习和成长将由当地生物化学教师和普渡大学的教育研究人员进行评估，以确定学生对研究方法、可视化、生物学背景和蛋白质功能机制的理解。教师团队将开发经过验证的评估工具来衡量这些目标，并将平衡确保健全教育所需的课程材料的同质性与适应不同机构环境所需的灵活性。课程教师和项目评估者将使用教育研究技术进行合作，以监控学生研究行为的发展和教师教学方法的变化。然后，经过改进和测试的课程将准备好在生物化学教学界更广泛地传播。人们普遍认识到，需要显著改进本科STEM教育，并纳入更多样化的人口。项目团队包括来自一家拉美裔服务机构和一家拥有大量聋哑人和重听学生的机构的教师；纳入这些教师确保这些社区的需求和关切将被纳入该项目。

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.