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

项目摘要 EvolvingSTEM实验室使用引导式研究体验来提高学生的信心 他们作为科学家的行动和思考能力。学生们参加了一个真实的细菌进化 几乎可以在任何地方用最少的设备进行实验。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，因为它们适应在短短几天内产生生物膜。的 实验在模拟感染过程中的进化方面具有生物医学相关性， 细菌通过相同的突变适应慢性感染。附带的生物信息学模块 已经开发，为学生提供数据科学的经验，当他们识别突变， 从先前的学生研究实验中产生的全基因组测序数据。学生学会 通过生产的不确定性，以传统生命科学的方式与材料接触， 教育不能，并建立他们的批判性推理能力。像我们这样的调查 来自各种背景的学生形成一种代理感，将自己视为科学家，并激励 对相关职业的兴趣。 这个建议将测试我们的计划可以改善主题学习的总体假设 在一个主要由代表性不足的少数民族参加的大型学区， (URM)和经济上处于不利地位的学生，城市匹兹堡公立学校（PPS） 系统我们的目标是（1）改善高中生对学习基本生命科学的态度 主题，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 并影响我们的生活，（3）提供实验室方法和数据科学方面的实用技能发展， （4）激发他们在STEM领域追求职业的兴趣，部分方法是帮助他们确定自己是 研究人员 我们寻求评估项目对大多数学科学习和STEM吸引力的影响 URM/DA课程，并将测试近同行导师和扩展查询模块对 目标1（Aim 1）。我们还将衡量对STEM态度变化的持续性 以及学生作为研究者的身份认同感。此外，我们会大力加强 我们的课程的可及性，以不同的学习需要的学生，并深化其相关性， 医学、公共卫生和数据科学（目标2）。值得注意的是，我们将构建一个基于云的可视化工作流程， 在分析学生产生的基因组数据时，教授学生数据科学原理。 实验

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.