Carlos Goller

We are interested in the impact of using open data and research tools in a classroom setting on student understanding, confidence, and attitudes, specifically in the context of learning the biological process of mitosis. The principal products from this project are a) three variant lessons used to test learning outcomes, which will also be released as open education resources (OERs) at the end of the study, and b) a validated concept inventory (CI) on mitosis, a tool used to capture student understanding of core concepts on a topic. The principal research outcome is to investigate the impact of these variant lessons (no open data, exposure, experiment) on student knowledge of mitosis (measured with the CI), confidence in their own knowledge, interest in continuing study, and other attitudinal outcomes. I will be contributing to the development of the lessons, leading the recruitment of faculty to participate in the testing of the lessons, contributing to the research, and contributing to dissemination of the lessons and research products. I will attend monthly virtual meetings and yearly in-person workshops to design the lessons, improve the resources and concept inventory, and recruit participants. Through existing and new connections from regional and national meetings, I will contribute to the recruitment efforts.

Despite the accelerating expansion of online resources for modern life science education and training, the reality is that development of molecular biology laboratory-based skills requires ‘hands-on’ instruction, preferably in a research-oriented context. Keeping pace with recent scientific breakthroughs and incorporating such developments into the educational setting is challenging from both workforce and economic perspectives. Yet, educational strategies that rely on traditional, lecture alone or outdated, laboratory experiences ineffectively prepare the current and future generations of the US biomedical workforce. Here, we propose to develop and implement a new paradigm for teaching modular molecular biology-oriented laboratory courses that relate established critical skills to cutting-edge technologies in support of the professional viability of modern biologists and biotechnologists. Our overarching goal is to initiate and support a collaborative effort to ‘teach the teachers’ how to Designate, Design, Develop, Deploy and Disseminate (5-D) Molecular Biotechnology Laboratory Education Modules (MBLEMs) on cutting-edge topics across the higher education landscape. This aim will be accomplished by fostering multi-institution cooperation, creative new pedagogical approaches, and integration of interdisciplinary research and bioethics into novel educational modules. We will collaborate initially with teams of participants from five different institutions, and then add three new partners along the way, that collectively represent a broad range of higher educational missions. In support of the MBLEM effort, we will establish a virtual support network, i.e., ongoing inter-institution communication throughout the year to enable MBLEM implementation, led by faculty and teaching postdoctoral fellows at North Carolina State University (NC State). The year-long, 5-D support process will be centered around an annual summer workshop at NC State attended by representatives of our partner institutions that will nucleate interdisciplinary teams of faculty, teaching assistants (graduate students and postdoctoral fellows) and experienced MBLEM instructors. As part of this process, we will organize career development and outreach opportunities that bring together faculty and students from the partner institutions, including those that focus on serving minority students and students with disabilities, to form a supportive and inclusive community fostering modern life science laboratory training. We will also assess MBLEM dissemination and the impact of training on participating MBLEM institutions educational programs and students. Assessment will enable the identification of challenges faced at different institutions and reveal how to better train diverse groups of students in critical skills needed to be productive members of the US biomedical workforce.

Dr. Goller will plan and attend meetings to launch this national initiative. He will contribute to the analysis of data from interviews and dissemination of results by interfacing with QUBES and other networks to broadly disseminate findings. In case of COVID or travel restrictions, Dr. Goller will work with PIs to develop online workshops, training materials, and conduct online interviews to collect and analyze data.

Overview. For modern life science researchers, high-throughput approaches can open the doors to discovery of novel genes, drugs, and regulatory networks. The effective design, implementation, and analysis of high-throughput research requires fundamental quantitative skills. Taken together, the opportunity for new modes of discovery and development of associated quantitative skills makes integration of high-throughput research into college biology curricula highly attractive. Yet, the high cost and technological demands of high-throughput discovery prohibit its use in most college laboratories. To address this need, the proposed Research Coordination Network in Undergraduate Biology Education (RCN-UBE) seeks to improve student quantitative skills and participation in high-throughput discovery. Researchers and teaching fellows in the network will learn about high-throughput technologies and work together to create novel case studies that will demystify high-throughput approaches and promote discovery science to reinforce cornerstone STEM concepts and quantitative skills in the college classroom. The specific objectives of this network are to: ● Provide workshops, a virtual community, and online resources to foster high-throughput research and its integration into the classroom ● Connect researchers and educators to design and assess quantitative biology case studies based on high-throughput discovery research ● Create a diverse consortium of institutions committed to implementing these quantitative educational tools in biology courses and curricula across the country and world Steering Committee: 1. Dr. Carlos Goller, NCSU Biotechnology Program, Raleigh, NC. [PI; molecular biology education] 2. Dr. Sabrina Robertson, NCSU Biotechnology Program, Raleigh, NC. [Co-PI; molecular biology education] 3. Dr. Sam Donovan, University of Pittsburgh, PA. [QUBES and virtual mentoring] 4. Dr. Patricia Marsteller, Emory University, Atlanta, GA. [Case study design] 5. Dr. Mark Melton, Saint Augustine’s University, Raleigh, NC. [Assessment & evaluation] 6. Dr. Mark Pauley, University of Nebraska, Omaha, NE. [Bioinformatics competencies] 7. Dr. Conner Sandefur UNCP, Pembroke, NC. [Undergraduate partner institutions] 8. Dr. Adriana San Miguel, NCSU, Raleigh, NC. [HT data acquisition expertise] Intellectual Merit. A research and educational network that includes primarily undergraduate institutions, early career teaching faculty, and national and international researchers will create impactful educational materials to demonstrate the transformative power of high-throughput approaches and teach underlying quantitative skills. The resulting inquiry-based case studies will engage students in authentic research and better train future scientists for jobs in modern molecular biology. Undergraduates will analyze novel data sets and develop their quantitative skills, while network participants will enhance their research and teaching through provided high-throughput technical workshops and the development of case studies with teams of network-trained faculty and postdoctoral “Case Fellows”. Broader Impacts. This project provides training opportunities for a diverse group of undergraduates, graduate students, researchers, and educators. Educators from diverse institutions and researchers from underrepresented groups will interact at meetings. The network’s educational resources can be implemented in a variety of undergraduate curricula and will be widely disseminated through publications, presentations, workshops, and web access to encourage adoption, adaptation, assessment, and creation of cases that use high-throughput approaches and data.

The National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Research Coordination Network (RCN) for undergraduate biology education HITS: High-throughput Discovery Science & Inquiry-based Case Studies for Today’s Students hosts an annual summer workshop focusing on the use of high-throughput (HT) biotechnology approaches for scientific discovery. On the first day of the three-day workshop, participants learn about cutting-edge HT approaches with talks from distinguished speakers creating and using HT approaches. Demos of cutting-edge HT biotechnology approaches allow participants to truly appreciate the capabilities of software and instrumentation. On the second and third days, participants form interdisciplinary groups composed of researchers and educators. Facilitators and Case Fellows from the previous cohorts (ten faculty selected from NC colleges and universities in 2018, 11 faculty from all over the country for the second cohort) introduce the use of educational case studies and problem-based learning to participants. Case Fellows present examples of cases on HT topics they are designing and implementing in courses, and groups are tasked with designing novel cases using authentic data (often unpublished and shared by labs and institutes such as Dr. Rob Dunn’s group and the Allen Institute). This workshop will teach participants about novel high-throughput approaches and how they can be incorporated into college classrooms through case studies. The case studies designed as part of the HITS workshop will expose students in numerous colleges both in North Carolina and nationally to high-throughput discovery. Importantly, the presence of industry, government, and academic HT researchers along with teaching faculty is critical to catalyze the formation of interdisciplinary collaborations to infuse authentic HT into curricula. The resources created by HITS and the collaborations established at the summer workshop impact our future biotechnology workforce, particularly in the RTP.

The goal of this event is to create the infrastructure for an inclusive research experience that is open to all students. To achieve this goal, we aim to: 1. Provide mentored research experiences to students who are excluded from most traditional undergraduate research programs. 2. Engage teams of students and faculty in authentic research and open science practices. 3. Create an open research community that connects teams of students and faculty from multiple institutions and facilitates ongoing collaboration and research opportunities for students. 4. Promote a system of mentoring, collaborative data analysis (using accessible web-based tools such as KBase [DOE], Nephele [NIH], and CyVerse [NSF]), and learning that is scalable to other institutions and open for further collaboration.

The keystone of our proposed Biotechnology (BIT) Sequencing-based Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) is student immersion in research that uses next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies to answer important biological questions. Research mentors will engage students in projects across a variety of fields including microbiology, virology, neuroscience, plant biology,epigenetics, forensics, and toxicology. The goals of our program are to 1) train students to use transformative NGS tools to propel interdisciplinary research; 2) recruit, inspire, and prepare a diverse group of students for biotechnology-related research careers; and, 3) engage participants in sharing their research and newly acquired knowledge with the academic community and, through educational outreach, with K-12 deaf and hard of hearing students. NCSU’s Biotechnology Program (BIT), an interdisciplinary effort through which researchers, educators and students from over 35 departments drive innovation in biotechnology education and research, will sponsor the proposed REU. We offer research-based courses that are designed using the best evidence-based teaching practices to equip students with cutting-edge molecular biology skills. The BIT program’s research education experience and infrastructure make it an ideal central training facility for young undergraduate researchers. Ten trainees will begin their 10-week experience in BIT with a NGS technology short course. In the course, students will receive laboratory safety training, learn about NGS technology through case studies, prepare samples for sequencing, and analyze data using common bioinformatic tools and NGS software. Participants will also attend weekly seminars on NGS research, biotech careers, graduate school, responsible conduct of research, and visit biotech companies in Research Triangle Park. Throughout the summer BIT SURE trainees will also work together to develop a deaf accessible K-12 outreach activity. The collaborative outreach project, social events across the Research Triangle, and activities with other local N.C. REUs will foster collegiality and long-term peer relationships amongst trainees. For the summer capstone, students will present a poster at NCSU’s research symposium and an outreach activity to students from the North Carolina School for the Deaf (NCSD). Recruitment for BIT SURE will focus on underrepresented groups in STEM, including deaf and hard of hearing students, first generation college students, women, minorities and students with no prior research experience. The common web-based assessment tool used by REU programs and funded by the Division of Biological Infrastructure will be used to evaluate the training program. Students will be tracked by the BIT Program and be required to respond to an email sent via the NSF reporting system.

The National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Research Coordination Network (RCN) for undergraduate biology education HITS: High-throughput Discovery Science & Inquiry-based Case Studies for Today’s Students hosts an annual summer workshop focusing on the use of high-throughput (HT) biotechnology approaches for scientific discovery. On the first day of the three-day workshop, participants learn about cutting-edge HT approaches with talks from distinguished speakers from the RTP area and guests. Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows selected to be HITS “HT Research Fellows” present on their research using HT approaches. On the second and third days, participants form interdisciplinary groups composed of researchers and educators. Facilitators and Case Fellows from the first cohort (ten faculty selected from NC colleges and universities in 2018) introduce the use of educational case studies and problem-based learning to participants. Case Fellows present examples of cases on HT topics, and groups are tasked with designing novel cases using authentic data (often unpublished and shared by labs and institutes such as Dr. Rob Dunn’s group and the Allen Institute). This workshop will teach participants about novel high-throughput approaches and how they can be incorporated into college classrooms through case studies. The case studies designed as part of the HITS workshop will expose students in numerous colleges both in North Carolina and beyond to high-throughput discovery. We seek funding from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center (NCBC) to support the workshop by hosting guest speakers.