Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) are attractive solutions for scaling undergraduate research experiences at primarily undergraduate teaching institutions, where resources for faculty research activities can be limited. The Sustainable Interdisciplinary Research to Inspire Undergraduate Success (SIRIUS) project is a unique…

This article describes a comprehensive practical laboratory method for developing an enzyme to more easily measure glyphosate levels in solution. Through this article, undergraduate students of biology majors can conduct research experiments in critical fields by utilizing various techniques, such as chemiluminescence (CL) biosensors with…

Despite reform efforts emphasizing written communication implemented in the undergraduate science curriculum, college science students still struggle with scientific research writing. Further, science majors have few opportunities to engage in authentic disciplinary scientific research writing. This research was set in an upper-division Scientific…

At our small liberal arts college, we require undergraduates majoring in Biology and Biomedical Sciences to take a seminar in the spring of their senior year. Each year, the seminar focuses on a different topic in molecular biology and/or biochemistry. The course operates as a "journal club"--every week, a student presents a…

Advancing equity and justice in undergraduate biology education requires research to address the experiences of disabled students. Scholars working in disability studies have developed models of disability that inform Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER). To date, DBER literature has been predominantly informed by the medical and social…

Undergraduate students interact with the culture of scientific research when they participate in direct mentorship experiences and laboratory courses such as course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs). Much work has been done to explore how CUREs impact the interest, motivation, and retention of undergraduate students in science.…

Science advances through the interplay of idea construction and idea critique. Our goal was to describe varied forms of productive disciplinary engagement that emerged during primary literature discussions. Such descriptions are necessary for biology educators and researchers to design for and recognize diverse repertoires of participation in the…

Undergraduate research and laboratory experiences provide a wide range of benefits to student learning in science and are integral to imbed authentic research experiences in biology labs. While the benefit of courses with research experience is widely accepted, it can be challenging to measure conceptual research skills in a quick and easily…

Introduction to Primary Literature (IPL) courses can be early-career precursors to undergraduate research experiences, whereby students can become familiar with potential mentors and their research toward better alignment with student/faculty interests and goals. IPL courses have been shown to increase student science self-efficacy and…

Researchers who work on course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) and issues related to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) retention have begun exploring changes in student thinking about what it means to be a scientist. To support this effort, we developed rubrics to score answers to three open-response prompts: What…

Most undergraduate students do not have practical experience working with model organisms despite having theoretical knowledge of their importance. This practical was developed to offer students experience working with three species of nematode, including "Caenorhabditis elegans." In the first task, students prepare slides of three…

Previously, we described a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) for first-year students that featured a unique approach to brain mapping in a model organism (rat). In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we adapted this course for an online learning environment, emphasizing image analysis (identifying immunoreactive signal in an…

A growing body of literature shows that Primary Scientific Literature (PSL) is a valuable and useful tool for STEM. Current assessments measuring the success of PSL-based interventions focus mainly on specific scientific content and/or the specific scientific skills students learn. We believe that the underlying motivation students consider while…

During COVID-19 lockdowns, online learning activities had to be developed for the Undergraduate and Masters by Coursework Bioinformatics students at RMIT University. Therefore, we designed an integrative, industry-based research assignment, which guided the students through a drug discovery project from target identification to lead optimization.…

Knowledge construction is an essential scientific practice, and undergraduate research experiences (UREs) provide opportunities for students to engage with this scientific practice in an authentic context. While participating in UREs, students develop conceptualizations about how science gathers, evaluates, and constructs knowledge (science…