ABLE 2016 Poster Session

---

Quantitative Skills in Context 
Christopher W. Beck 
Emory University

Whether quantitative skills are best taught in the context of disciplinary science classes or in specially-designed courses in math and statistics for science majors is unclear. The aim of this study was to evaluate the quantitative literacy of beginning biology students and explore learning gains in quantitative literacy when quantitative skills are taught in the context of biology. During Spring and Fall 2015, I used the BIOSquare Quantitative Biology Assessment designed by an HHMI collaborative as a pre-test/post-test in my Organismal Form and Function course of approximately 60 students. In addition, I asked demographic questions and questions about previous quantitative training. Preliminary analysis suggests that students showed a statistically significant increase in quantitative skills with scores on the assessment increasing from 61% to 64%. However, the effect size was small (0.225). Future analysis will include the effects of demographic factors and previous quantitative experience, as well as item analysis to determine if gains were in particular quantitative skills.

Uncovering the Past: Using Human Demography to Promote Civic Engagement 
Emily Boone
University of Richmond 

Cemeteries are excellent places to study human demography. For decades introductory ecology labs have taken students to the local cemetery to collect data, learn about survivorship curves and look for trends in our history. This lab works, it is investigative and can be done in all weather conditions but it also has the potential to do so much more. By foregoing the manicured lawns and rolling hills of the prestigious historical landmark cemetery we normally use for a forgotten plot of land on the other side of the city, our lab on demography allowed them to literally uncover history and transformed into a discussion of community succession and human segregation. As universities are focusing more and more on engaging with their local communities, the cemetery lab can be a way to connect your science students to the world around them in a very real and tangible way.

Team-Based Learning in a Majors/Non-majors Neuroscience Course 
Greg Q. Butcher 
Thiel College 

Neuroscience 101: The College Brain is designed as a bridge course to help students transition between high-school and college. The course has no per-requisites and is intended for 1st year college students. The course serves students majoring in Neuroscience (approximately 15% in the fall 2015 offering), other science majors (20%), and non-science majors seeking to fulfill their lab requirement (65%). The latter group typically consists of students from all academic levels (1st year – senior). Students completing earlier iterations of the course at Thiel College (2014) and Centenary College of Louisiana (2011-13; both taught by the author) demonstrated difficulty understanding readings and linking concepts from the readings to aspects of the course. To address this concern, in fall 2015 a new team-based learning approach was integrated into the class lecture and lab portion of the class. Here I report on this technique and present data from the pilot year.

The Use of Parasitoid Wasps (Leptopilina heteratoma) in Biology Laboratory Courses 
Antonia Florio and Kathleen A. Nolan
St. Francis College 

The parasitoid wasp, Leptopilina heteratoma, infects the second instar stage larvae of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. This process can be used to enhance interest of students in parasitology, genetics, and developmental biology courses. Students can conduct a variety of studies, including determining the efficacy of infectivity of various mutants of fruit flies. First, students subculture various mutants of fruit flies and wait until second instar larvae have developed. They then remove the adult flies and coat the inside of the plug with honey, which will serve as the food source for the wasps. They then anaesthetize the wasps and add them to the vials with the fruit fly larvae. They can then count surviving adult fruit flies after the flies should have completed their life cycle in both infected and uninfected flies. The wasps that infect the larvae take twenty-eight days to hatch and produce a new source of wasps. Other species of these non-stinging parasitoid wasps have also been sold commercially for pest control. Pros and cons of using parasitoid wasps in this manner can be added to round out the laboratory experience for the student.

Teaching Introductory Biology at a Field Station
William V. Glider and Benjamin Reed 
University of Nebraska-Lincoln 

Cedar Point Biological Station (CPBS) is the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s teaching and research field facility in western Nebraska. The field station is in the heart of the western high plains near the juncture of tall grass and short grass prairie and the Southern edge of the Sandhills. CPBS hosts a number of researchers each year and 80-100 students enrolled in field based biology courses as well as art and photography. I started teaching Life 121 (Fundamentals of Biology II) at CPBS during the summer of 2013. This 3 week course typically enrolls two sections each having 18 students, majoring in biology and biology related disciplines. This course integrates organismal biology, evolution, behavior, ecology, and biodiversity by engaging students in a lecture and field-based active learning environment. Two projects are carried out by teams of students which emphasize scientific problem solving skills including experimental design, experimentation, and hypothesis testing using statistical analysis. One of these projects uses crayfish as the model organism. Each team of students give an oral presentation of their results. Traditional insect and plant collections are used to emphasize phylogenetic affinities within insect orders and angiosperm plant families. A comparative physiology approach is employed in a survey of invertebrates which are observed and collected in the CPBS environs. In discussing the characteristics of the living organisms observed by the students, their adaptations for their survival is emphasized. This course is truly unique. A sample of 121 field stations found that none of them offered a true introductory college level biology course. We have found this course not only teaches the fundamentals of whole organism biology but also builds an amazing sense of comraderie between students planning a career in the biological sciences.

Swamp Scurry: A Game for Cell Cycle and Its Regulating Factors 
Huong Nguyen and Debra Mauzy-Melitz Debra
University of California, Irvine 

Games are a fun and effective tool that can be used to teach students fundamental concepts about the cell cycle while highlighting the important of cell cycle regulation. There is a need for additional educational tools for development and cell biology for high school or lower-division students before they take upper-division classes. We developed a board game called Swamp Scurry that teaches the fundamental concepts of cell cycle including stages, regulation, and termination. The cyclical nature of the game conceptualizes the cyclical pattern of cell development. The dynamic and interactive point system (CDK, ubiquitin) represents the regulation and termination of the cell cycle. Swamp Scurry is based on a fictionalized swamp where players, represented by animals, must compete for survival. Students who answer the most questions correctly earn the most points, complete more cell cycles, develop their organism faster and thus they win. Questions used in this game are flexible, and can be modified by instructors to customize topic or complexity. This module was tested in two sections of an upper-division biological writing class at University of California, Irvine in 2015. 92.8% of students found the game to be fun of which 28% indicated they prefer using this game as a review tool, but indicated the tool should not replace lecture. Overall, Swamp Scurry would be a good supplement to traditional didactic lectures when used as a review tool in not only developmental and cell biology classes, but in any science classes from high school to collegiate levels.

The Care and Feeding of Survey Data 
Hans Lemke
University of Maryland 

Surveys are commonly used to assess opinions in educational research. There has been significant debate concerning the handling of data generated from the so-called Likert scales used in these instruments. The primary source of this confusion appears to be the difference between Likert-style items and true Likert scales. This poster addresses the difference between these two items, and provides guidelines for researchers to properly analyze and present their data and practitioners to evaluate and interpret published results.

A Better Brain Dissection and Other Activities to Support the Active Classroom 
Laura Manella 
Cornell Universtiy 

In STEM education, buzz words like “flipping”and “active learning” are still controversial. Although research provides evidence that these teaching methods are effective, instructors often struggle to effectively implement active teaching tools. I will discuss the development of curriculum in a team taught Introduction to Neurobiology course at Cornell University as it actively transitions into the “flipped” format. I will provide concrete examples of successful implementation of active learning in and out of the classroom, such as ideas for pre-lecture videos and in-class iClicker questions and discussion activities. Moreover, I will specifically describe a better sheep brain dissection lab that uses prompts throughout the manual to get students to analyze how and why the brain is organized as it is, rather than using rote memorization of brain structures. This could serve as a model for all dissections and guided lab activities.

Laboratory Exercise to Demonstrate the Effects of Microgravity on the Human Body 
Karen McMahon 
The University of Tulsa 

In conjunction with NASA’s historic year in space twin study with Scott and Mark Kelly, I decided to incorporate exercises to demonstrate the effects of microgravity on the human body into the Human Anatomy (Biol 2151) and Human Physiology (Biol 2171) laboratories for the allied health majors. This poster presents a variety of laboratory exercises that examine the effects of microgravity on vision, balance, skeleton and the muscles from the educational offerings on the NASA website.

Mixing Up the Recipe: Inquiry-Based Learning in First-Year Undergraduate Labs 
Jody Rintoul
Augustana Faculty, University of Alberta 

Active learning has proven to be a very effective method for student understanding. There are many benefits when students actively engage in the materials they are learning about and take ownership of their learning, such as having a tendency to understand concepts better, being able to articulate their knowledge more thoroughly, and having a longer lasting understanding. Not surprisingly, labs are an excellent opportunity to allow students to engage in the material, however, often times the lab exercises are a set of steps with an outcome that is consistent over many times, and ultimately, the students aren’t engaged in asking questions about what they are doing. At Augustana, we have recently ventured into making some of our introductory biology “cookbook” labs into inquiry-based exercises. Here I: i) outline a lab exercise that was converted to inquiry-based learning, ii) explain how we implemented the changed format, iii) what did and did not work, and iv) lessons learned from this change. Ultimately, we found students had a high level of understanding of the concepts upon completion of the revised lab exercise.

PopGen Simulator 
Dan Shiebler 
Brown University 

The PopGen Simulator is a GUI-­based interactive tool for teaching students about population genetics and computer simulation. Students use the program to simulate the growth and evolution of a population at the genomic level. Users select between a variety of different models, specify the parameters of the model, and visualize the results. The simulator was used in several lab exercises for the Brown University Course “Computational Theory of Molecular Evolution and Population Genetics,” where students used the simulator to reinforce concepts and validate mathematical reasoning. For example, in one laboratory exercise students ran multi-locus simulations with a variety of mutation rates and number of loci, and reasoned about the resulting population evolution. In addition to its teaching applications, the PopGen Simulator can also be used to generate synthetic data and includes an API that researchers can use to quickly prototype and visualize their models. The simulator is written in MATLAB, and also includes a command line component.

DAPI in the Classroom 
Vu, Hubert 
University of California, Irvine 

The 4′, 6-diamidino-2-phenylindole, or DAPI, stain is a fluorescent stain that allows visualization of DNA in living and fixed cells by binding to the AT-rich regions of DNA. DAPI absorbs ultraviolet light at a wavelength of about 358 nm, and in doing so, emits light at a wavelength of 461 nm—blue light visible through a blue or cyan filter on the microscope. This allows for the quantification of nuclear bodies within cell samples. Though a useful tool for scientists to screen organisms, DAPI staining can be problematic for students in the university lab classrooms, some of which may include pink blotches on the slide, DAPI being unable to penetrate the cuticle of organisms such as C. elegans, or what students tend to have the most problems with, loss of sample size.

Measuring Student Transformative Learning in a Biology Lab 
Mark Walvoord
University of Central Oklahoma 

Biology laboratory teaching techniques include active learning, collaboration, critical thinking, writing, reflection, and often discourse. Transformative learning theory states that students are given their best opportunities for transformation through willingness to grow, engagement in learning experiences, critical reflection, and substantive discourse. So, students in biology laboratories should be experiencing transformations, or changes in perspectives. To know if this really is happening, biology educators need assessment tools to measure student transformation. Our university has recently implemented such a tool, campus-wide, through an initiative called the Student Transformative Learning Record (STLR). This poster will describe the STLR rubric and lay out a plan for its implementation in biology laboratory courses.

Relating Plant Ecology to Soil Biodiversity 
Robyn Wood
Vancouver Community College 

Relating soil fauna to above ground plant composition is an interesting way to compare and contrast different ecosystems. Belowground ecosystems are complex, diverse and interesting study systems. Plant ecology field trips can be enhanced by exploring the diverse underground fauna through soil sampling and analysis. This poster will summarize methods and results from field studies of soil fauna from different ecosystem types.