A CURE for learning about experimentation

11-06-2018

Those who are wondering what students in course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are learning about research will want to follow this work - just published in BAMBEd, see https://iubmb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bmb.21173 The findings show that Anticipated Learning Outcomes identified by 10 instructors in the Biochemistry Authentic Scientific Inquiry Laboratory (BASIL) CURE project align with ACE-Bio Basic Competencies of Biological Experimentation available as a Purdue ePub online at docs.lib.purdue.edu/pibergiim/4. The ACE-Bio project is an NSF-funded research coordination network (BIO Innovation Activity) that is bringing together educational specialists (who study how students learn) and scientists (who are active researchers) to develop assessment tools for directly measuring what students learn about experimentation in biology through undergraduate research and classroom experiences.  By studying the concepts underlying an experiment and the nature of representations students apply in reasoning about experiments and visualizing data, the project is revealing areas of student difficulties, leading to new instructional and mentoring approaches targeting those areas.