RCN-UBE: HITS: High-throughput Discovery Science & Inquiry-based Case Studies for Today's Students

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC

Investigators

Abstract

This RCN-UBE network project seeks to increase opportunities for undergraduate students to develop quantitative skills and participate in high-throughput discovery research. This network addresses the need to educate undergraduates, graduate students, researchers, and faculty in massively-parallel and high-throughput (HT) approaches that are becoming increasingly common in research and industry. Educators committed to increasing exposure of students to new techniques and datasets will work with researchers to develop educational case studies using a series of resources developed by experts in high-throughput research and case-based learning. Researchers using HT techniques will learn at the workshops from experts in academia and industry. This collaboration will empower faculty to develop and implement case HT studies in undergraduate education and promote applied quantitative skills including descriptive statistics and use of online 'big data' databases and tools. The network will disseminate these case studies broadly and work with other RCN-UBE programs to integrate the resources created in STEM courses and curricula across the country and world. The network team will use a series of workshop meetings to bring together the STEM education community, with a focus on faculty from diverse institutions and researchers using or learning HT approaches. The workshops will foster the exchange of ideas and increase awareness of the importance of HT techniques in scientific research and the STEM education community. This research and educational network includes primarily undergraduate institutions, early career teaching faculty, and national and international researchers to create impactful educational materials to demonstrate the transformative power of HT approaches and teach underlying quantitative skills. The resulting inquiry-based case studies will engage students in authentic research and better train future scientists and engineers for jobs in modern molecular biology. Undergraduate students will analyze novel data sets and develop quantitative skills, while network participants will enhance their research and teaching through provided HT technical workshops and the development of case studies with teams of network-trained faculty and postdoctoral "Case Fellows". This project provides training opportunities for a diverse group of undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, researchers, and educators. The products of the HITS RCN-UBE will be widely disseminated and available on the web to encourage faculty to adopt, adapt, assess, improve and create case studies that demystify high-throughput approaches and data sets. This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO), Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR), Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (http://visionandchange.org/finalreport/). This project is also co-funded by the Division Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (MCB) in the BIO directorate.