EvolvingSTEM: authentic classroom research curriculum to enhance inclusion and agency in modern life science

EvolvingSTEM：真实的课堂研究课程，以增强现代生命科学的包容性和能动性

• 批准号: 10664572
• 负责人: Vaughn Cooper
• 金额: $ 26.83万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-06-21 至 2028-05-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10664572
• 关键词: Agar; American Association for the Advancement of Science; Antimicrobial Resistance; Attitude; Award; Bacteria; Bioinformatics; Biological Sciences; Biology; Biotechnology; Data; Data Science; Educational Curriculum; Educational process of instructing; Epidemiology; Equipment; Evolution; Familiarity; Focus Groups; Genetic; Goals; Group Interviews; Growth; Health; Health Sciences; Heritability; High School Student; Human; Human Microbiome; Infection; Instruction; Intervention; Investigation; Knowledge; Laboratories; Laboratory Research; Lead; Learning; Learning Disabilities; Measures; Medicine; Mentorship; Methods; Microbe; Microbial Biofilms; Microbiology; Mission; Modeling; Modernization; Motivation; Mutation; Outcome; Parents; Patient Self-Report; Performance; Phenotype; Productivity; Pseudomonas fluorescens; Public Health; Reproducibility; Research; Research Methodology; Research Personnel; Role; STEM career; Schools; Scientist; Students; Surface; Surveys; System; Technical Expertise; Testing; Time; Uncertainty; Underrepresented Minority; Underrepresented Populations; Visual; Work; career; causal variant; chronic infection; classroom research; cloud based; design; disadvantaged student; economic disparity; education research; empowerment; expectation; experience; experimental study; fitness; follow-up; genome sequencing; genomic data; graduate student; high school; improved; interest; laboratory curriculum; laboratory experience; laboratory experiment; literacy; multisensory; offspring; opportunistic pathogen; pathogen; pathogenic bacteria; peer; peer coaching; peer networks; programs; school district; science education; skill acquisition; skills; student participation; teacher; undergraduate student; whole genome; young woman

Project Summary The EvolvingSTEM laboratory uses a guided research experience to increase student confidence in their ability to act and think as scientists. Students take part in an authentic bacterial evolution experiment that can be conducted almost anywhere with minimal equipment. High school students learn microbiology, genetics, and biotechnology through the organizing principle of evolution, seeing obvious, heritable changes in bacterial colonies as they adapt to produce biofilm in just a few days. The experiment is biomedically relevant in simulating evolution during infections because related pathogenic bacteria adapt during chronic infections by identical mutations. An accompanying bioinformatics module has been developed that provides students experience in data science when they identify mutations from whole-genome sequencing data generated from prior student research experiments. Students learn to work through productive uncertainty, to engage with the material in ways that traditional life science education cannot, and to build their capacity for critical reasoning. Investigations such as ours allow students from all backgrounds to form a sense of agency to see themselves as scientists and motivate their interest in related careers. This proposal will test the overarching hypothesis that our program can improve topical learning and attraction to STEM in a large school district attended predominantly by underrepresented minority (URM) and economically disadvantaged (DA) students, the urban Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) system. Our goals are to (1) improve high school student attitudes towards learning essential life science topics, such as evolution, microbiology, and genetics, (2) improve understanding of how microbes evolve and influence our lives, (3) provide practical skill development in laboratory methods and data science, and (4) motivate their interest in pursuing careers in STEM, partly by helping them to identify as researchers. We seek to assess program impacts on subject learning and STEM attraction in majority URM/DA classes and will test the influence of near-peer mentors and an extended inquiry module on these outcomes (Aim 1). We will also measure the persistence of changes in attitudes towards STEM and students’ own sense of identity as researchers. In addition, we will substantially reinforce the accessibility of our curriculum to students of diverse learning needs and deepen its relevance to medicine, public health, and data science (Aim 2). Notably we will build a cloud-based visual workflow to teach students principles of data science when analyzing genomic data produced by students’ experiments.

项目摘要 Evolvingstem实验室使用指导研究经验来增强学生的信心 以他们作为科学家的行动和思考的能力。学生参加真实的细菌进化 几乎可以用最少设备进行的任何地方都可以进行实验。高中生学习 微生物学，遗传学和生物技术通过进化的组织原则，显而易见， 细菌菌落的遗传变化在短短几天内适应生物膜。 实验与模拟感染过程中的模拟进化有关，因为相关致病性 细菌通过相同的突变在慢性感染过程中适应。随附的生物信息学模块 已经开发了学生在发现数据科学方面的经验时确定突变的经验 从先前的学生研究实验产生的全基因组测序数据。学生学会 通过生产不确定性来工作，以传统生活科学的方式与材料互动 教育不能，并建立了关键推理的能力。像我们这样的调查允许 来自各个背景的学生形成一种代理感，将自己视为科学家和动力 他们对相关职业的兴趣。 该建议将检验我们计划可以改善主题学习的总体假设 在一个大型学区的STEM的吸引力主要由代表性不足的少数民族参加 （URM）和经济上的（DA）学生，匹兹堡城市公立学校（PPS） 系统。我们的目标是（1）改善高中生的与会者学习基本生活科学 主题，例如进化，微生物学和遗传学，（2）提高对微生物如何进化的理解 （3）在实验室方法和数据科学方面提供实际技能发展， （4）激励他们对从事STEM职业的兴趣，部分是通过帮助他们确定为 研究人员。 我们试图评估多数人对学科学习和STEM吸引力的计划影响 URM/DA课程，将测试近对导师的影响以及扩展的查询模块对 这些结果（目标1）。我们还将衡量出勤率变化的持续性 以及学生作为研究人员的身份感。此外，我们将大大加强 我们的课程可访问潜水员学习需求的学生，并加深其与 医学，公共卫生和数据科学（AIM 2）。值得注意的是，我们将建立一个基于云的视觉工作流程 分析学生生产的基因组数据时，教学学生的数据科学原则 实验。