Graduate employability is an important concern for contemporary universities. Alongside the development of employability skills, it is also crucial that students of bioscience, a "non-vocational" subject, have awareness of the breadth of potential careers that can follow from their initial degree. Over the past five years we have developed the…

The Mayo Innovation Scholars Program introduces undergraduates to technology transfer in biomedical sciences by having teams of students from multiple disciplines (e.g., biology, chemistry, economics, and business) analyze inventions in development at the Mayo Clinic. Over 6 months, teams consult with inventors, intellectual property experts, and…

Research into virtual role-based learning has progressed over the past decade. Modern issues include gauging the difficulty of designing a goal system capable of meeting the requirements of students with different knowledge levels, and the reasonability and possibility of taking advantage of the well-designed formula and techniques served in other…

With the world population recently surpassing seven billion people, it is critical for students to consider how such growth can lead to limited resources. Both the idea of diminishing resources and the magnitude of enormous numbers can be difficult for children (and many adults) to fully comprehend. For this particular lesson, the authors chose to…

Charles Darwin's botanical studies provide a way to expose students to his work that followed the publication of "On the Origin of Species." We can use stories from his plant investigations to illustrate key concepts in the life sciences and model how questions are asked and answered in science.

Finding the time for developing or locating new class materials is one of the biggest barriers for instructors reforming their teaching approaches. Even instructors who have taken part in training workshops may feel overwhelmed by the task of transforming passive lecture content to engaging learning activities. Learning cycles have been…

Since 2006, the Kolumbus-Kids project in Germany has been supporting gifted learners between the ages 9 and 12. Selected children from regional schools are invited to participate in courses dealing with biological problems and phenomena at university. In order to attend these sessions, they first have to pass a special performance test and a test…

This work describes a new field research laboratory in an undergraduate animal behavior course involving the study of whale behavior, ecology and conservation in partnership with a non-profit research organization--the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation (BOS). The project involves two weeks of training and five weekend trips on whale watch…

Development of skills in bioscience undergraduates is seen as desirable by academic staff, students and employers, and this is reflected across most degree programmes. However, providing the opportunity for students to practise skills may alone be insufficient for their development. With an evident discrepancy between the skills expected of…

Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) uses specially designed activities and cooperative learning to teach content and to actively engage students in inquiry, analytical thinking and teamwork. It has been used extensively in Chemistry education, but the use of POGIL is not well documented in other physical and biological sciences. This…

The Arnold Arboretum is a public "tree museum" that sits on more than 300 acres of parkland in Boston. Like many public parks, the arboretum uses a percentage of its funding to provide nature education for adults and schoolchildren, facilitated by trained volunteer docents. One such effort is the Head Start-Arboretum project, which…

In this article, the author discusses how to tell the difference between a cold and airborne allergy symptoms. A cold is caused by a viral infection. Viruses spread through an infected person's cough, sneeze, handshake, or contact with a contaminated surface. When a virus enters one's body, his/her immune system reacts. This produces the symptoms…

The National Research Council (NRC) was asked by the National Defense Intelligence College (NDIC) to convene a committee to review the curriculum and syllabi for their proposed master of science degree in science and technology intelligence. The NRC was asked to review the material provided by the NDIC and offer advice and recommendations…

The genome projects of the past decades have created extensive databases of biological information with applications in both research and education. We describe an inquiry-based exercise that uses one such database, the National Center for Biotechnology Information Influenza Virus Resource, to advance learning about influenza. This database…

This article presents the science project "Kolumbus-Kids" as an example of the innovative use of "E-Learning" and other "new technologies" to advance student learning and new-media education. The project benefits from various technology-based education strategies and E-Learning scenarios which are employed during the…