Integrated Science Education for Discovery in Introductory Biology (InSciED-In)

A large body of evidence supports the value of traditional research apprenticeships in the academic, personal, and career development of undergraduates. The College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota has embedded authentic research experiences in all of their introductory biology courses. As a result, more than 4,000 students currently engage in classroom-based authentic research experiences each year. This project will expand that effort so that students can advance from their initial classroom designed research experiences to the full range of scientific inquiry, from asking a question to producing new knowledge. This proposal is inspired by the Integrated Science Education Outreach (InSciEd Out) Program (http://insciedout.org/), which involves middle school children in research projects that produce publishable results. The project (dubbed InSciED-In) is designed to provide undergraduate students, including both biology majors and non-majors, with a rigorous, comprehensive research experience that includes observation, questioning, hypothesis building, experimental design, data collection/analysis/presentation, and the expectation that, through this work, they will discover new knowledge.

Based on evidence from pilot studies some student projects will result in publishable research, enhancing understanding of basic processes of life, including the genetics of complex traits, developmental biology, behavior, and ecosystems. Implementing the InSciED-In approach on this large scale creates an opportunity to examine differences in student outcomes between inquiry-based labs, classroom-based research apprenticeships, faculty-led research apprenticeships, and complete (InSciED-In) research experiences. A further educational research topic scheduled to be examined is whether discovery-based research that uses computational approaches to probe databases provides learning outcomes equivalent to those achieved through bench-based research experiences. These analyses promise to produce better understanding of which types of research experiences have the greatest positive impact on students, and which students are most affected. Over the five years of this grant, more than 11,000 non-majors and 2,000 majors will participate in an InSciED-In research experience.