NSF funds IUSE: Developing a bioinformatics Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience for online students.
Katey submitted a grant with PI Dr. Melissa Wilson and Co-PI Dr. Sara Brownell to develop and evaluate a bioinformatics CURE to serve students enrolled in the ASU online B.S. in Biological Sciences program.
Arizona State University (ASU) is defined by who we include, not who we exclude, and how they succeed. A major initiative at Arizona State University has been to increase access to higher education through the development of online courses and degree programs. We have launched fully-online Bachelor in Science degrees in Biological Sciences and in Biomedical Sciences. ASU’s online biology degree program is giving unprecedented access to a biology degree for students who would not otherwise be able to get a degree in biology: most of our students report that this was their only option to major in biology. Further it is increasing access to biology degrees for women, low income students, and first-generation students. However, the online degree in biology does not allow students to engage in the high impact practice of undergraduate research, which has been recommended as an essential component of all undergraduate science degree programs and is especially important for students who are interested in pursuing advanced degrees. In this proposal, we aim to develop a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) for students in this online biology degree program. We will use bioinformatics as the study system of the CURE to allow students to conduct the research with only a computer and an internet connection. We anticipate that the online CURE model will be easily modifiable and extendable to multiple types of “-omics” data, and therefore the lessons learned through this proposal could increase the opportunities for inquiry-based computational research can easily be extended across institutions, potentially increasing access to research for thousands of students. This proposal will drastically increase the access to research opportunities for hundreds of students in a fully online biology degree program, which will likely enhance students’ persistence in science. Students in the online degree program are more likely to be women, first generation, low income, working full-time, and primary caregivers so this could help diversify who participants in science. In particular, this online CURE will also broaden the diversity of individuals who typically engage in computational life sciences research. Additionally, the model of the online CURE can be implemented at other institutions, specifically non-research institutions, potentially broadening access to research to thousands of students.
This project will: 1. Develop an online computational life sciences CURE focused on training in computer programming, genetics, statistics, and reproducibility, and 2. Assess the impact of the online computational life sciences CURE on scientific research goals and teaching goals. Students will learn basic command line skills, read primary literature, develop hypotheses, run software, and interpret results. The research aim of this project will be rooted in biological questions, where datasets change annually, and students are asked to assess how changing bioinformatics parameters affects the biological interpretations of their results. This project will yield scientific research findings in bioinformatics, specifically effects of different parameters on biological inference in next generation sequencing data, that will be shared with the broader community. Students will be engaging in real scientific research and the research that they conduct will be compiled into a publishable manuscript. Further, through the assessment of this online CURE, we will help establish what impacts an online CURE can have on students, which will contribute to our broader understanding of CUREs in the field of undergraduate biology education. We will assess both student comprehension of bioinformatics skills, as well as how the CURE affects their self-identity as a scientist and their likelihood to pursue a career in science.
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