Mobile Lab Experiences and TRIPs (Teacher-Research Institute Partnerships) to Inspire Middle School Students

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SUMMARY OF FUNDED PROJECT AND SUPPLEMENT PROJECT Our currently funded SEPA project creates NGSS-aligned curriculum for students in grade eight at under- resourced urban and rural middle schools with high populations of financially disadvantaged and minority students. We are assessing the short-term impact of students completing the lessons, and the medium-term impact on career interests, coursework selection and perceived self-efficacy in grades nine and ten. The first curriculum module that the team designed focused on epidemiology and infectious diseases. “Investigations in Infectious Disease” is a five-lesson curriculum with four of the lessons taught by grade eight science teachers and one taking place onboard the mobile lab. For the classroom activities, students follow the steps in an epidemiological investigation and review case reports of patients infected with a foodborne bacterial illness. During the lesson on the mobile lab, students use gel electrophoresis to generate DNA fingerprints to identify the source of the outbreak. The curriculum was implemented in 29 classrooms during the 2019/20 school year prior to the pause in in-person schooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Assessment results showed strong gains in student content knowledge and understanding of the principles of epidemiology. Of note is that the “Investigations in Infectious Disease” curriculum was created and implemented prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, there is no information or resources for teachers about COVID-19 in the curriculum. Once schools resume in-person instruction, teachers will need easy access to accurate, relevant information about the pandemic, vaccine development and infection prevention to share with their students at all grade levels. For this supplement, we propose creating a classroom lesson on COVID-19 for middle school science teachers that can be taught as a supplement to the “Investigations in Infectious Disease” curriculum created for our currently funded project. Once we have collected feedback on the supplemental lesson from the teachers enrolled in the current study, we will make any needed revisions and make it available to any interested teacher. Since students at all grade levels will return to school with questions and concerns about the pandemic, we also propose creating a lesson for elementary school students that will take place on the mobile laboratory. Once we have incorporated teacher feedback, we will disseminate the curriculum to mobile labs and other outreach programs through our deep connections to these communities. Finally, we will create a laboratory experiment on PCR diagnosis of viruses like SARS-CoV-2 and accompanying content on the pandemic for high school students who come for field trips to our research campus. This experiment will take place in the Science Discovery Lab, our dedicated student lab, and will be led by a Seattle Children’s scientist. Collectively, these new resources will ensure that teachers and students have access to accurate, up-to-date information on the COVID-19 pandemic as they return to school in the 2020/21 school year, and beyond.