RCN-UBE: Development of an Inclusive Community for the Instruction of Visualizing Biomolecules

今天的生物化学和生命科学专业的学生如果要在个性化医疗、农业和生物燃料等领域取得关键进展，就需要了解分子结构，这些领域对人类未来的福祉是必要的。鉴于分子结构的重要性，生物分子的图像被广泛应用于生物化学和分子生物学的教科书和课堂中。然而，这些数字通常是静态的，并不能完全传达发生在三个维度上的复杂的结构/功能关系，特别是对本科生新手来说。此外，教师很少探索学生是否能从中提取关键的结构特征和关系。该项目将通过创建生物化学和分子生物学教师网络来制定评估学生生物分子视觉素养技能的策略和评估。这些教师将以团队合作的方式，为色盲个人开发可访问性更好的评估，以探索学生的可视化技能。在同行评审过程之后，这些工具的子集将在在线储存库上免费提供。作为一个跨机构的实践社区，教师网络将促进更强大和更普遍理解的生物分子可视化教学。这个项目将使用先前在BioMolViz.org开发的分子可视化框架。BioMolViz框架定义了视觉识字的12个主要主题，这些主题细分为学习目标和目标。为了进一步填充它，将创建评估工具来评估学生在实现视觉素养学习目标方面的进展，这四个主题是教育工作者在我们以前的工作中确定的对社区最重要的四个主题-单体识别、交替呈现、分子相互作用和结构-功能关系。在创建和同行审查之后，将在网络成员的教室中试行反复修订的问题。将应用项目反应理论，使用Rasch模型进一步测试工具的可靠性，以确定哪些项目应包括在在线储存库中。这些研究收集的数据将用于改进未来评估开发的方法，并建立一个明确教授分子可视化技能的实践社区。该项目的共同资金由改善本科生STEM教育(IUSE：EHR)计划提供，以表彰该项目与IUSE：EHR计划的总体目标的一致性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Today's biochemistry and life sciences students need an understanding of molecular structure if they are to make the critical advances in areas such as personalized medicine, agriculture, and biofuels necessary for the future welfare of humanity. Given the importance of molecular structures, images of biomolecules are extensively used in biochemistry and molecular biology textbooks and classrooms. However, these figures are usually static and do not fully convey complex structure/function relationships that happen in three dimensions, especially to novice undergraduate learners. Furthermore, instructors seldom explore whether students can extract key structural features and relationships from them. This project will develop strategies and assessments for evaluating students' biomolecular visual literacy skills by creating a network of biochemistry and molecular biology instructors. Working in teams, these instructors will develop assessments with improved accessibility for colorblind individuals that probe students' visualization skills. Following a peer-review process, a subset of these tools will be made freely available on an online repository. By working as a trans-institutional community of practice, the network of instructors will facilitate more robust and more universally understood instruction in the visualization of biomolecules.This project will use the previously developed molecular visualization framework at BioMolViz.org. The BioMolViz framework defines twelve overarching themes in visual literacy that are subdivided into learning goals and objectives. To further populate it, assessment instruments will be created to evaluate student progress in achieving the visual literacy learning objectives in the four overarching themes identified by educators in our previous work as being of greatest importance to the community--monomer recognition, alternate rendering, molecular interactions, and structure-function relationships. Following creation and peer review, iteratively revised questions will be piloted in classrooms of network members. Item-response theory will be applied using the Rasch Model to further test the instruments for reliability to determine which items should be included in the online repository. The data collected from these studies will be used to improve the methods for future assessment development and establish a community of practice for the explicit instruction of molecular visualization skills.Co-funding for this project is being provided by the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE: EHR) program in recognition of the project's alignment with the overarching goals of the IUSE: EHR program.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.