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.

项目概要 EvolvingSTEM 实验室利用指导性研究体验来增强学生的信心 培养学生像科学家一样行动和思考的能力。 几乎可以在任何地方用最少的设备进行实验。 微生物学、遗传学和生物技术通过进化的组织原理，显而易见， 当细菌菌落适应在短短几天内产生生物膜时，它们会发生遗传性变化。 该实验在模拟感染过程中的进化方面具有生物医学意义，因为相关的致病菌 细菌在慢性感染过程中通过相同的突变进行适应。 已经开发出来，当学生识别突变时，可以为他们提供数据科学的经验 学生之前的研究实验生成的全基因组测序数据。 克服生产性的不确定性，以传统生命科学的方式处理材料 教育不能，并培养他们的批判性推理能力，如我们的调查所允许的。 来自不同背景的学生形成一种将自己视为科学家并积极主动的意识 他们对相关职业的兴趣。 该提案将测试我们的计划可以改善主题学习的总体假设 以及在主要由代表性不足的少数族裔就读的大型学区中对 STEM 的吸引力 (URM) 和经济困难 (DA) 学生，匹兹堡市区公立学校 (PPS) 我们的目标是 (1) 提高高中生学习基本生命科学的态度。 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 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) 激发他们追求 STEM 职业的兴趣，部分方法是帮助他们认识到 研究人员。 我们寻求评估项目对大多数人的学科学习和 STEM 吸引力的影响 URM/DA 课程并将测试近同伴导师和扩展探究模块对 我们还将衡量对 STEM 态度变化的持续程度。 以及学生自身作为研究人员的认同感。此外，我们将大幅强化 我们的课程可供有学习需求的学生使用，并加深其与以下方面的多样化相关性： 值得注意的是，我们将构建基于云的可视化工作流程来实现医学、公共卫生和数据科学。 在分析学生产生的基因组数据时，教学生数据科学原理 实验。