Student-Driven Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CUREs) Projects in Identifying Vaginal Microorganism Species Communities to Promote Scientific Literacy Skills

Abstract

ObjectivesWe aim to build a students' own engagement in original microbiological course-based undergraduate research experience (CUREs) model served two research and teaching scientific purposes including students' scientific literacy skills and instructors' role, which could further be applied as contribution to broader scientific knowledge and conduct novel research in their future research experience and careers.MethodsWe describe a student-driven CUREs model on the microorganism species in female vaginal using general bacterial culture techniques and high-throughput 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing to enable students to center experimental research method under the direction of instructors. A total of 8 undergraduate students and 5 instructors from Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine participated in the project. The CUREs were divided in four operating scopes: project planning, implementation, summarizing and feedback phases. Instructors help students to develop learning research goals.ResultsThis project helped students to gain “hard skills” experiences in scientific theoretical research process and technical practices. Students reached the conclusion that Lactobacillus species dominated the primary vaginal microbiota in reproductive-age women, 16S rRNA sequencing is a method widely applied for microbiology detection. CUREs also increased students' engagement in scientific experiments and promote 3 learning goals in “soft skills”: (1) Develop students' self-study and efficacy ability, expression capability and professional research communication skills; (2) Strengthen students' motivation and ownership in science research, overcoming failure, benefitting persistence and patience, building professional science identity, competence, and confidence in collaboration, implement spirit of rigorous and carefulness; (3) Obtain authorship, independent and logical thinking capability, summarizing ability and confidence enhancement. Instructors proposed guiding research question for the students and determine evidence in achieving pedagogical goals in CUREs.ConclusionsOur microbiological CUREs project served two scientific purposes: research and teaching, which increase students' engagement in promoting learning gains in scientific research skills, ownership, identity development, and spirit of motivation, self-efficacy, persistence, collaboration, communication, as well as opportunities to make relevant scientific discoveries. These abilities equipped them with essential foundation for the subsequent collaborative experiments and future scientific study.

Scaffolding STEM Literacy Assignments To Build Greater Competence in Microbiology Courses

“…CUREs are ideal opportunities to reinforce literacy skills ( 2 – 4 , 10 , 11 ). Applied microbiology students build upon prior exposure to literacy skills and become familiar with current trends in scientific research, interpret data, and develop methods for data visualization through scaffolded tasks.…”

“…Initial benchmarks for literacy gains include familiarity with literacy tasks and ability to successfully present scientific findings and analyses. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) provide multiple avenues to facilitate STEM literacy skills ( 2 , 3 ) and self-efficacy ( 4 ) through a series of research and writing tasks. Ongoing research surveys of upper-level (third and fourth year) students in microbiology CUREs report a wide-ranging of familiarity with literacy-oriented tasks, indicating a need for early and continued reinforcement of literacy-based curricula as well as further study (unpublished data [IRB H19106]).…”

Conceptualizing bioinformatics education in STEM literacy development for pre-service biology teachers

“…The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS, 2013) current science standards provide new education and training to bring STEM literacy to the mainstream of science education as they include extensive references to technology and engineering topics and practices across scientific fields. Such research conducted by Yang et al (2022) to establish students' engagement in indigenous microbiology course-based undergraduate research experience model (CUREs) serves two purposes of scientific research and teaching, including students' scientific literacy skills and the role of the instructor, which can be further applied as a contribution for broader scientific knowledge and to carry out new research in their experience and future research career. The description of the problems mentioned leads us to create a conceptual framework for bioinformatics education towards STEM literacy for pre-service biology teachers.…”