Guest post by Michele Markstein and Gregory Davis.

A summary of the May 26, 2020 TAGC 2020 Online workshop, “Raising a Woke Generation of Geneticists: How and Why to Include Eugenics History in Genetics Classes.”

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minnesota police officers, the nation has been wrestling with how to identify and combat systemic racism. As geneticists, it is clear that our field has much work to do, as we have an appallingly small number of Black geneticist colleagues. As solutions are discussed and implemented at the levels of departments, schools, and professional societies, there is a step forward that we can take right away as teachers of genetics: we can include the history of eugenics in our classrooms. This can make our classrooms more inclusive and our discipline more inviting to people it has traditionally alienated. Additionally, teaching eugenics history can help our students learn to combat racist ideology cloaked as “science,” and it can make the next generation of geneticists less likely to repeat the racist mistakes of our past.

If you do not feel equipped to teach eugenics history, you are not alone. It is conspicuously absent from modern genetics textbooks. For this reason and with the support of the GSA, we convened a virtual workshop at the TAGC2020 conference titled, “Raising a Woke Generation of Geneticists: How and Why to Include Eugenics History in Genetics Classes.”

At the workshop it became apparent that many geneticists who are interested in teaching eugenics history shy away from it for two common reasons: (1) they do not feel qualified to teach history, a subject outside their field, and (2) they do not want to risk creating an uncomfortable classroom environment.

We therefore offer the following advice to help you get started:

1. If you are apprehensive about teaching outside of your field of expertise, invite a colleague from across campus to give a guest lecture. Most likely there will be an expert in eugenics history in departments of African-American studies, anthropology, history, legal studies, sociology, and women and gender studies. This is a great way to forge an interdisciplinary relationship on your campus and can be a lot of fun.
2. If you are worried that you cannot navigate “uncomfortable” conversations, don’t worry, there are some simple steps you can take to help everyone in the room. First, everyone in the room does better when there is a reminder at the start that conversations about eugenics are likely to bring up uncomfortable feelings in different ways for different people and that this is OK. Second, students tend to be their best selves when ground rules or guardrails are specified to remind them that we are in this together and that everyone is expected to treat one other with compassion, empathy, and respect. For more tips on creating an inclusive environment, we recommend guidelines from Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching: “Teaching Race: Pedagogy and Practice.” Another helpful article was recommended by participants at the meeting: “Signaling inclusivity in undergraduate biology courses through deliberate framing of genetics topics relevant to gender identity, disability, and race” by Karen Hales.

Additionally, we welcome you to download all the materials from the workshop: a list of recommended resources on eugenics history, a summary of participant survey responses, and panelist slide decks as summarized below. We look forward to the community’s continued interest and work in the field, and a future in which teaching eugenics history in genetics is as commonplace as teaching Punnett squares.

Summary of workshop materials:

1. A list of recommended resources compiled from panelist and participant input: If you need to catch up on the history of eugenics, take a look at the recommended resource list. A good place to start is with the 10-minute clip from the Ken Burns PBS documentary, The Gene–an Intimate History, and the 3-minute trailer for No Más Bebés by Renee Tajima-Pena and Virginia Espino which documents non-consensual sterilizations of Mexican immigrants in California. In addition, the list has links to lesson plans, websites, videos, podcasts, articles, and books that delve into to the history of eugenics.
2. Results from the Workshop Survey: A summary of participant advice, concerns, and recommendations for the future. The entire set of survey responses is included.
3. Panelist slide decks:
   • Marnie Gelbart, Personal Genetics Education Project, pgEd: Gelbart’s session provided a brief overview of the history of eugenics, through a short clip from the Ken Burns documentary, The Gene: An Intimate History and pgEd’s curriculum on “Genetics, History, and the American Eugenics Movement”, which was reframed in the past 12 months, thanks to support from the NIH Science Education Partnership Award program. This lesson plan looks at the history of eugenics as a lens for examining recent advances in precision medicine and genome editing with an eye towards safeguarding against future injustices. pgEd has heard from educators across the country that this curriculum fills a content gap in the science classroom and gives teachers some of the tools required to feel confident in tackling a sensitive topic related to the misuse of genetic arguments. In the session, Gelbart presented pgEd’s recent work to reframe its curricula to center the people who fought back against racist and discriminatory policies and practices in genetics and medicine. This is part of pgEd’s larger efforts to truly integrate a broader spectrum of topics and include the experiences and voices of historically marginalized peoples into the biology classroom.
   • Gregory Davis, Bryn Mawr College: Davis shared a vignette about an approach he has taken with students interested in the history of eugenics who’ve taken his undergraduate course in the history of genetics and embryology, which he teaches in the Biology Department at Bryn Mawr College. He focused on the advantages and caveats of co- and re-discovering the history of one’s own institution with students by examining primary sources—in this case, papers presented by both geneticists and eugenicists at the Second International Eugenics Congress in 1921.
   • Michele Markstein, UMass Amherst: Markstein’s presentation focused on two approaches that she has used in teaching eugenics history to large undergraduate classes: (1) inviting her colleague, Dr. Laura Lovett from the History Department to guest lecture and (2) presenting the material herself in a blended approach that enables students to review scientific topics from earlier in the semester (e.g., pedigree analysis, DNA sequencing, SNP genotyping, pleiotropy, human evolution and migration) while exploring ethical considerations in deciding to eliminate a SNP associated with “pathogenic” body odor from the human population. At the end of this lecture, most students in her white-majority class learn that they likely have the “pathogenic” SNP. In Markstein’s experience, both approaches resonate especially well with Black and Latinx students.
   • John Novembre, University of Chicago: Novembre’s presentation focused on teaching about the interface of genetics and society in a graduate curriculum. The importance of this type of teaching is supported from the National Academy of Science’s recent report on Graduate Education for the 21st Century, and he shared some of the practices he and his colleagues have been experimenting with at the University of Chicago. These include activities around teaching about genetics and race, as well as the history of eugenics. He concluded with sharing some challenges to this work and highlighting the need for more resources and educational research in this area.

Guest post by Erin Vinson, University of Maine and Michelle Smith, Cornell University

Are you teaching genetics and looking for some new ideas? Check out CourseSource, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal that publishes field-tested articles describing undergraduate biology activities. All the activities are aligned with learning goals written by life science professional societies, including GSA. Many of the articles on CourseSource are easily adapted to be taught in online formats, and new submissions are always welcome!

Here are some recent genetics articles:

The ACTN3 Polymorphism Applications in Genetics and Physiology Teaching Laboratories

Frey, Somers, and colleagues describe a set of inquiry-based laboratory modules that focus on a common polymorphism in the ACTN3 gene. This Lesson article addresses principles in genetics and physiology, and it includes an accompanying Science Behind the Lesson article about ACTN3 Polymorphism.

DNA Detective: Genotype to Phenotype. A Bioinformatics Workshop for Middle School to College

Sternberger and Wyatt designed this workshop to introduce students from middle school to college to big data and bioinformatics. This lesson uses CyVerse and the Dolan DNA Learning Center’s online DNA Subway platform.

Fruit Fly Genetics in a Day: A Guided Exploration to Help Many Large Sections of Beginning Students Uncover the Secrets of Sex-linked Inheritance

Croshaw and Palmtag developed a short, guided exploration laboratory activity that illustrates contrasts between sex-linked and autosomal inheritance mechanisms.

CURE-based Approach to Teaching Genomics Using Mitochondrial Genomes

Pogoda and colleagues developed a four-week CURE module centered around teaching genome annotation. Students have the opportunity to publish their annotated genomes to NCBI’s GenBank.

There are also a variety of articles not specific to genetics that would be a great fit in any class. Here are a few:

Using Comics to Make Science Come Alive

Gormally uses graphic memoirs to help students understand the relationship between science and issues they face in everyday life. These comics often serve as a powerful entry point for non-science majors.

Structuring Courses for Equity

Hocker and Vandegrift identified four evidence-based elements that they used in course design and implementation. The authors discuss the relevant literature and their own experience supporting equitable classrooms.

The Pipeline CURE: An Iterative Approach to Introduce All Students to Research Throughout a Biology Curriculum

Lee and colleagues present the pipeline CURE framework, which integrates one research question throughout a biology curriculum. The authors discuss evidence-based teaching methods and ongoing scientific research to help students overcome barriers to participation in undergraduate research.

Guest post by Abha Ahuja, Assistant Professor of Natural Sciences at Minerva Schools at KGI.

As on-campus meetings for laboratory courses are canceled, you might be wondering if you’ll be able to meet your goals in a virtual environment. It will take some adjustment, but it is doable if you are strategic about what you want your students to learn and why. Begin by asking yourself, “What was the goal of the lab session and lab course?” Typically, lab courses allow students to gain some exposure to specific techniques and instrumentation. Ultimately, however, the larger purpose of labs is to allow students to apply the process of science and develop scientific reasoning skills. With this new framing, here are three approaches that allow students to conduct authentic research (without setting foot in the lab!).

Do a structured analysis of primary literature: Engaging with primary literature promotes the development of data interpretation skills and allows students to see how specific techniques fit into their scientific discipline. However, left to their own devices, novices get overwhelmed by jargon and technical details (Lie et al. 2016) and lose the forest for the trees. Therefore, it is important to structure this task and guide students’ reading to clarify critical concepts and emphasize aspects most relevant to your course goals and learning outcomes. 

• Write a custom reading guide including an explanation of why you selected a particular article and how it links to the course. Design study questions that require students to articulate the big question and specific hypotheses, key features of the study design, and how specific results relate to the authors’ conclusion. In this annotated sample custom reading guide, I illustrate a flipped-classroom approach.
• Primers in Genetics from the Genetic Society of America are a fantastic resource to support the use of peer-reviewed articles in college classrooms. Use these primers to write your reading guides or as supplementary resources for students. 
• CREATE is a peer-reviewed, evidence-based strategy for intensive analysis of Primary Literature. A CREATE module consists of four articles, published from the same lab. You can task students to read and analyze these articles sequentially, and there are several ready-to-use modules and roadmaps on a variety of topics available.

Analyze real-world data sets: Ask students to analyze and visualize real-world data, then interpret and contextualize their findings. This will allow them to practice and improve their data analysis and quantitative reasoning skills. Moreover, compared to cook-book labs, using authentic data is more interesting and engaging for students (Kjelvik & Schultheis 2019). Try these freely available data sources that include advice on implementation and execution:

• Data nuggets 
• Course Source Bioinformatics modules 
• QUBES

Write mock grant proposals: Research proposals require students to synthesize and critique primary literature, think creatively about open questions in a line of inquiry, and design studies to test their ideas. Best practices for such assignments include scaffolding the grant writing process with multiple staggered deadlines, sharing rubrics and evaluation criteria, and integrating opportunities for feedback and deliberate practice. The articles below contain several useful resources including grading rubrics and template assignment directions. 

• “Thinking like a neuroscientist”: Using scaffolded grant proposals to foster scientific thinking in a freshman neuroscience course
• The use of mock NSF-type grant proposals and blind peer review as the capstone assignment in upper-level neurobiology and cell biology courses

To make class time feel engaging, ask students to prepare parts of the assignment tasks in advance and spend class time having students work in small groups to improve and iterate on their work. Peer instruction will help students learn from each other and give them a valuable opportunity to connect, which is especially important if they are all suddenly remote. For instance, you might follow up on grant proposals with a mock grant panel in class. Each of these strategies can also be adapted to asynchronous classes; Instructors could spread assignment tasks over several weeks, and students would use collaborative document editing tools (such as Google Documents) to exchange feedback asynchronously. Collaboration is an essential part of the scientific process; this just might be an opportunity to teach students more than they could have learned in a traditional lab.

Bibliography

Bringing authentic research and data into K-16 classrooms. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://datanuggets.org/

Bioinformatics. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.coursesource.org/courses/search/c/bioinformatics

Hoskins, S. G., Stevens, L. M., & Nehm, R. H. (2007). Selective Use of the Primary Literature Transforms the Classroom Into a Virtual Laboratory. Genetics, 176(3), 1381–1389. doi: 10.1534/genetics.107.071183

Itagaki H. (2013). The Use of Mock NSF-type Grant Proposals and Blind Peer Review as the Capstone Assignment in Upper-Level Neurobiology and Cell Biology Courses. Journal of undergraduate neuroscience education : JUNE : a publication of FUN, Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience, 12(1), A75–A84.

Kjelvik, M. K., & Schultheis, E. H. (2019). Getting Messy with Authentic Data: Exploring the Potential of Using Data from Scientific Research to Support Student Data Literacy. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 18(2). doi: 10.1187/cbe.18-02-0023

Köver, H., Wirt, S. E., Owens, M. T., & Dosmann, A. J. (2014). “Thinking like a Neuroscientist”: Using Scaffolded Grant Proposals to Foster Scientific Thinking in a Freshman Neuroscience Course. Journal of undergraduate neuroscience education: JUNE: a publication of FUN, Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience, 13(1), A29–A40.

Lie, R., Abdullah, C., He, W., & Tour, E. (2016). Perceived Challenges in Primary Literature in a Master’s Class: Effects of Experience and Instruction. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 15(4). doi: 10.1187/cbe.15-09-0198

Teaching Quantitative Biology Online. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://qubeshub.org/community/groups/quant_bio_online/resources

About the Author

Abha Ahuja is an Assistant Professor of Natural Sciences at Minerva Schools at Keck Graduate Institute, where she teaches in a virtual classroom using active learning pedagogy. If you want to learn more about teaching life sciences via active learning online email me at abha@minerva.kgi.edu.

Guest post by Cassidy Villeneuve, Wiki Education.

A Wikipedia writing assignment is a great opportunity for instructors to teach science communication skills on a world stage. In this kind of assignment, genetics students create or improve Wikipedia articles related to course topics. They’re especially well equipped to translate scientific concepts this way for a general audience, because they remember what it was like learning these concepts for the first time. And they feel an increased sense of motivation to produce quality work, considering that millions of readers can access it. Students also gain familiarity with the backend of a website they use all the time, preparing them to consume information online with a more critical lens in the future. 

If you’re teaching an upcoming course, consider utilizing an assignment like this. Wiki Education has free assignment templates, student trainings, and staff support to help you be successful. Here are just a few success stories from genetics and other biology courses that have done this in the past!

Students dive deep into a niche topic by improving a “stub” article

Many biology and genetics-related courses that incorporate Wikipedia writing assignments focus on Wikipedia’s “stub” articles, which are only a few sentences long. They’re a great starting place for students who don’t necessarily have the expertise to edit high-value, frequently visited pages.

That’s exactly what Laura Reed’s students did at the University of Alabama last fall. Among the 21 Wikipedia articles that her 17 students expanded, the one about odorant-binding proteins stands out. The student added 39 new references to it! 

Students edit high-value Wikipedia articles about fundamental biology topics

A student in Eric Guisbert’s developmental and molecular biology course at the Florida Institute of Technology contributed content to Wikipedia’s cell division article last spring. The page receives about 1,000 pageviews every day. It was a great chance for a single student to make a big impact by putting well-researched information related to course topics into the hands of so many people at once.

In addition to trainings that prepare students to make meaningful content edits, Wiki Education’s Dashboard has an Authorship Highlighting feature. Instructors can see exactly what each student contributed to their assigned article. See Guisbert’s student’s contributions to the cell division article, for example. While the student only added about 1,500 words, the process of contributing to Wikipedia required them to:

• understand how to evaluate their article for missing content,
• find sources that meet Wikipedia’s standards, and
• incorporate their research into the article’s existing content in a succinct way.

Wiki Education trainings provide guidance for the Wikipedia side of things, while instructors provide content expertise. By the end of this rigorous process, students can really feel like an expert!

Students create brand new articles

Some instructors who conduct this assignment have students create new articles for topics previously unrepresented on Wikipedia. Quite a few students did so in Nigel Atkinson’s epigenetics course at the University of Texas at Austin in Spring 2018. The Wikipedia article about the epigenetics of anxiety and stress-related disorders is brand new. You can already see through Authorship Highlighting on the Dashboard that Wikipedia volunteers have added some content to the article since the student created it. Collaborating to expand information about topics is what Wikipedia is all about!

Want to get involved?

There are a few ways you can get involved in improving science content on Wikipedia!

• Use Wiki Education’s free assignment templates to have your students write Wikipedia articles related to genetics: teach.wikiedu.org. 
• Learn how to edit Wikipedia yourself and expand your educational reach to the public: learn.wikiedu.org.
• Explore how you and your students can contribute data about genetics to Wikidata, the global open data repository that informs AI like Siri: data.wikiedu.org. 

About the author:

Cassidy Villeneuve is Wiki Education’s Outreach and Communications Associate

Improving research mentor training requires new approaches.

Mentoring is essential for the success of researchers at all career stages, but not all mentor-mentee relationships are created equal. Students from historically underrepresented backgrounds often receive less mentoring than their peers, and many mentors are not trained in how to mentor effectively. To address some of these needs, Entering Mentoring, an evidence-based program for research mentor training, was developed and shown to be effective in improving mentoring. 

Of course, such programs are only useful if people have access to them. In CBE—Life Sciences Education, Spencer et al. report on the infrastructure they have created to facilitate more widespread research mentor training.

The first hurdle that must be cleared for more mentors to receive training is to have more people capable of giving the training. Therefore, the authors took a train-the-trainer approach and recruited and trained master facilitators to instruct others in how to implement research mentor training, termed facilitator training. This approach has resulted in nearly 600 people being trained as facilitators, with over 4,000 mentors receiving research mentor training.

In order to be broadly useful, training for mentors needs to be applicable in a variety of settings, including at different institutions and for researchers at multiple career stages. The original Entering Mentoring program was designed as a summer seminar for graduate students mentoring undergraduates, but it has been expanded for different research areas and for those mentoring everyone from undergraduates to junior faculty. Modules to address specific concerns, like culturally aware mentoring, have also been developed, and there are resources available for structuring the programs in a variety of formats.

Even though a person might be trained in facilitating research mentor training, actually running such workshops requires time, resources, and support, which are not always available. To help address these concerns, facilitator training workshops were restructured to include resources and strategies for overcoming obstacles to implementation, such as encouraging facilitators at the same or similar institutions to cooperatively plan.

As mentorship programs expand, quality control is necessary to ensure that workshops are productive and that resources are accessible. Therefore, assessment tools were developed for facilitators to evaluate workshops they run, and a centralized evaluation system was developed to more effectively make use of feedback.

By developing this infrastructure, better training will become more accessible for more mentors. Early results of self-reported surveys suggest that research mentor training is already being effectively implemented—ultimately helping make science more accessible and productive. 

CITATION:

Building a Sustainable National Infrastructure to Expand Research Mentor Training

Kimberly C. Spencer, Melissa McDaniels, Emily Utzerath, Jenna Griebel Rogers, Christine A. Sorkness, Pamela Asquith, Christine Pfund

CBE—Life Sciences Education Published Online: 28 Aug 2018

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-03-0034

Guest authors Sanjai Patel and Andreas Prokop explain why school biology lessons are important places to advocate fundamental biomedical research, and they present strategies developed by the Manchester Fly Facility to bring Drosophila research into primary and secondary classrooms.

The need for fundamental biology research has perhaps never been greater than today, yet the conditions for meaningful biology research are in dire straits (e.g. 15; 5; 46; 42; 23; 25; 16; 12; bulliedintobadscience.org). Rectifying this situation requires science communication (scicomm) based on genuine long-term commitment paired with clever, engaging, and impactful strategies and narratives — aspiring to reach out to relevant target audiences and eventually also convince decision and policy makers.

Today’s school pupils will shape the future of our society. They are therefore a highly relevant audience for scientists who want to have a lasting impact on public support for fundamental research and science-backed policy. There is also clear evidence that experiences in early life impact later attitudes and decision making (1; 6; 17). Importantly, scientists working in fundamental biomedical research have the advantage that their area of expertise tends to be closely related to topics taught in school biology lessons. This provides excellent opportunities to collaborate with teachers in order to improve lesson content and the pupils’ experience of science.

I regularly encounter long-term retention of school experiences when talking with visitors at science fairs about Drosophila research and its importance (36); those who have seen Drosophila in schools, even decades ago, often want to share this experience with me and tend to engage more openly in dialogue from the start. Therefore, engaging with schools should be a no-brainer for scientists with a long-term vision, and we provide here some insights into the school work of the “Manchester Fly Facility” (ManFly) initiative, as an example that readers might find helpful.

Aims of the “Manchester Fly Facility” scicomm initiative

To our knowledge, the Manchester Fly Facility (ManFly) is the only long-term initiative dedicated to communicating and advocating for Drosophila research, alongside more research-oriented initiatives such as DrosAfrica (22; 44)and partly also TReND in Africa. Primarily driven by the two authors of this article, ManFly was launched in 2011 and has gradually expanded into six main areas of activity that reach a wide spectrum of audiences (26b; 27). These include:

• the development of resources for fly practical training;
• presentations at science fairs;
• science fair organization (e.g. the “Brain Box” event with over 5K visitors; 37);
• the making of educational movies (19);
• school engagement (see below); and
• encouraging other drosophilists and teachers to adopt our scicomm ideas and resources (see below).

Two of these ManFly activities stand out for their potential impact. Firstly, the fly training resources have had a major impact worldwide, with ~100,000 views and ~31,000 downloads across the four dissemination platforms (8; 28;29;41). Secondly, our school work has had the strongest growth and likely has the biggest future potential, as will be explained in the following.

A more effective way to engage pupils

As detailed in previous publications (26b; 27), ManFly’s school outreach was born out of our ideas developed for science fair presentations. Initially, we went into schools to showcase Drosophila research but learned very quickly that this approach is not very effective. Although it does address one important objective of teachers, that is, to bring pupils in contact with real researchers, it is far more powerful to also align with the teachers’ task of conveying curriculum-relevant content. This approach gains the attention of more pupils whilst generating memorable encounters with fruit flies, and it provides excellent opportunities to develop true dialogue between the two professional groups of scientists and teachers.

By now, ManFly has gathered experiences from over 80 events, including visits to schools, visits by school classes, and teacher seminars. We use these events to optimize our strategies and resources, and have formalized this approach through the launch of the “droso4schools” project in 2015 (10; 26a).

The droso4schools project: teaching with flies not about flies

The overarching objective of droso4schools is to use Drosophila as an effective tool for teaching curriculum-relevant content in biology school classes — ideally to achieve that its use would become a recommended or prescribed strategy in national curricula. Drosophila has essential advantages to this end: fruit fly research covers a broad spectrum of fundamental biology topics, providing excellent conceptual understanding, and there are many opportunities to perform micro-experiments that are memorable, cheap, simple, and easy to set up, even by teachers with little background in this area.

To achieve our objectives we capitalize on mutual collaboration with teachers: we as researchers bring our scientific experience and knowledge and can suggest conceptual improvements to content, and spice things up with engaging anecdotes, experiments, and relevant examples. Teachers provide the essential professional expertise of the curriculum and of effective teaching styles that match the realities of school life.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQKFtt3p2C8&w=500]

To implement teacher collaboration and/or get professional feedback, we use three different strategies:

• We place graduate students as teaching assistants in schools and have regular meetings during this placement (10; 26a).
• We invite teachers to continuing professional development events, which is an effective way of obtaining feedback and hearing a wider spectrum of teacher views (2).
• We build trust through repeated extracurricular school visits involving up to 200 pupils experiencing 3–4 different lessons in a single day. This also provides excellent opportunities to test new or improved resources (34).

The key products of all our school activities are our school lesson resources (Box 1; 30). So far, we have developed six lessons that are completed for teacher use and comprise a PowerPoint file accompanied by support materials (homework tasks, activity sheets, teacher notes, risk assessments). Two further lessons are under development but are already suited for extracurricular school visits. All of these lessons use Drosophila as a teaching tool to address a specific curriculum-relevant topic and are spiced up with micro-experiments and examples of research relevance.

Our classes are highly interactive and all contain micro-experiments. Examples shown are: A) using optogenetics to induce epilepsy-like seizures; B) identifying genetic marker mutations; C) performing dissections of maggots and colour reactions to demonstrate enzymatic activity; D) performing the climbing assay followed by data analysis and statistics. Experimental instructions are available at (39).

Outreach opportunities in primary schools

Most of our school resources aim at the higher levels of secondary school. More recently we also explored how to introduce Drosophila in meaningful ways in primary schools. Primary school engagement reaches kids at an even earlier age and provides opportunities to spawn fascination for and appreciation of nature, biology, or evolutionary theory, thus potentially influencing their future attitudes towards societal, ecological, or scientific challenges (see also 13; 14). But primary schools also pose new challenges:

• primary teachers tend to have less or no scientific training, and the nature of any collaboration tends to be less science-centred than in secondary schools;
• science is not as high a priority in primary schools (45);
• pupils are curiosity-driven but less prepared to follow scientific logic; it can sometimes be surprising what messages kids take away from lessons.

Illustrating the metamorphosis of muscles during the pupal stage of Drosophila to pupils. Source: movie taken and modified from Wikimedia (4).

For primary schools, the national school curriculum in England lists three relevant topics: inheritance, life cycle, and evolution (7), of which we chose the latter two. For both topics, Drosophila offers fantastic conceptual and experimental opportunities, as is detailed in our recent blog post (35). For example, pupils can observe and protocol the life cycle of flies in only two weeks and there is unique understanding of the metamorphosis that transforms Drosophila maggots into flies. The surprising fact that concepts of human biology can be discovered through work in flies is an example par excellence for concepts of deep homology, evolutionary trees, and the idea of common ancestors (11; this can be further enriched in secondary schools by uniquely enlightening fly examples of population genetics or speciation; 9; 3; 24). To actively engage the kids with evolution, they use microscopes to look at flies carrying marker mutations, and then use this experience to jointly invent an evolutionary tree.

Screenshot from the evolution lesson. Fly images were generated using the free “Genotype Builder” (29; 41).

The key challenges: evaluating and marketing our resources

Developing our lesson pool was a lengthy and laborious process, yet it was only the first step; since then, we have been faced with the far greater challenge of (a) evaluating the lessons and (b) encouraging others to use them.

Carrying out evaluations is a science of its own and requires strategy, time, and human resources to degrees that must be carefully considered from the start (43). So far, we have used simple surveys. In these surveys, pupils usually expressed positive views about enjoyment of the event, seem to have gained new understanding of biology topics (details in 34and 35), and the data suggest that we are able to ignite an interest in Drosophila: thus, before our school visits, awareness of fruit fly research was low, whereas afterwards there was strong support for introducing Drosophila in classrooms and even the use of fruit flies in research. These results look very promising but will have to be properly validated, for example by using pre- versus post-event surveys to assess knowledge gain, long-term surveys to test knowledge retention, or homework tasks to appraise depth of understanding and of subject engagement.

Evaluation results from a primary and a secondary school visit (details in 34; 35) demonstrating how lack of knowledge about Drosophila research can be turned into strong support. Click image to see a larger version.

To have maximum impact, we aim to encourage the use of our resources and ideas within the communities of teachers and drosophilists. This requires spreading awareness of the resources and facilitating their use. As an essential step to this end, we freely share our resources, for which we launched two dedicated figshare.com repository sites: the first one is primarily for teachers and hosts the six completed lessons (37); the second site is for drosophilists and provides access to extracurricular lessons and science fair materials (39).

As a further measure, we launched the droso4schools support website (20). This website introduces and links to our resources, provides lesson-specific pages with details about the content, and additional information about Drosophila (“Why fly?” and “Organs“).

These online resources provide proof-of-principle for our strategy and can now develop their own momentum, either by being actively used or serving as a template for resource development. With this in mind, we are promoting them through blog posts (30; 34; 35), talks and workshops at international conferences (31; 32; 40), journal articles for teachers (10) or drosophilists (26a), and finding allies who can help to drive the agenda politically or institutionally (see last section).

An appeal to scientists to join the school endeavor

What has been achieved so far with our school work is promising, as illustrated not only by the evaluations, but also by teacher and researcher comments from across the globe, as evidenced in our impact document (21). However, we hope that more teachers and drosophilists will be inspired to capitalize on our resources — be it using them as they are, adapting them for modified classes, or taking them as examples for designing lessons on new topics! If the principal strategy gains sufficient momentum and more of us adopt the necessary collaborative spirit across disciplines, communities and countries, and the relevant learned societies and science organizations drive the science education agenda politically (33), there is a realistic chance that flies can become established as routinely used teaching tools in schools — to the benefit of teachers, pupils, and researchers alike.

About the authors:

Both authors work at the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Healthof The University of Manchester. Sanjai Patelis the manager of the Manchester Fly Facility, Andreas Prokopis professor of neurobiology and academic head of the facility, and together theydrive the “Manchester Fly Facility” initiative and the ‘droso4schools‘ project mentioned in this blog post.         

References

(1) Archer, L., DeWitt, J., Osborne, J., Dillon, J., Willis, B., Wong, B. (2012). Science Aspirations, Capital, and Family Habitus:How Families Shape Children’s Engagement and Identification With Science. American Educational Research Journal 49,881-908 — (LINK)

(2) Blackburn, C. (2018). A droso4school CPD event for teachers. Blog post in“The Node” — (LINK)

(3) Brookes, M. (2001/2002). “Fly: The Unsung Hero of Twentieth-Century Science.” Ecco/Phoenix — (LINK)

(4) Chinta, R., Tan, J. H., Wasser, M. (2012). The study of muscle remodeling in Drosophila metamorphosis using in vivo microscopy and bioimage informatics. BMC Bioinformatics 13,S14-S14 — (LINK)

(5) Cohen, B. A. (2017). How should novelty be valued in science? Elife6,e28699 — (LINK)

(6) Croll, P. (2008). Occupational choice, socio-economic status and educational attainment: a study of the occupational choices and destinations of young people in the British Household Panel Survey. Research Papers in Education 23,243-268 — (LINK)

(7) Department for Education (2015). Statutory guidance – National curriculum in England: science programmes of study — (LINK)

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(9) Green, J. E., Cavey, M., Caturegli, E., Gompel, N., Prud’homme, B. (2018). Evolution of ovipositor length in Drosophila suzukii is driven by enhanced cell size expansion and anisotropic tissue reorganization. bioRxiv  — (LINK)

(10) Harbottle, J., Strangward, P., Alnuamaani, C., Lawes, S., Patel, S., Prokop, A. (2016). Making research fly in schools: Drosophila as a powerful modern tool for teaching Biology. School Science Review 97,19-23 — (LINK)

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Guest post by Michelle Smith, Cornell University.

Teaching genetics and looking for some new course ideas?  Check out CourseSource, which is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal that publishes articles describing undergraduate biology activities. All the activities are aligned with learning goals written by life science professional societies, including GSA.

Here are some recent genetics articles:

Meiosis: A Play in Three Acts, Starring DNA Sequence

Newman and Wright designed a new way to have students demonstrate meiosis with long strips of paper that contain DNA sequence. The questions instructors ask students help them learn about sister chromatids, homologous chromosomes, and chromosome pairing. The big “ah-ha” moment comes when students figure out they can use DNA sequence to find their homologous pair.

A Clicker-based Case Study that Untangles Student Thinking About The Processes in The Central Dogma

Pelletreau and colleagues from six different institutions designed a clicker-based case study activity that asks students to predict the effects of different types of mutations on DNA replication, transcription, and translation. Students often have mixed models of the Central Dogma of Biology and this activity helps them better understand what information is encoded at each stage.

A Hands-on Introduction to Hidden Markov Models
Weisstein and colleagues designed an interactive lecture, examples, and homework problems to teach students about Hidden Markov Models (HMM), which form the basis for many gene predictors. Student understanding of HMM is becoming increasingly critical in the era of big data, where biologists and computer scientists often collaborate on important scientific questions.

Linking Genotype to Phenotype: The Effect of a Mutation in Gibberellic Acid Production on Plant Germination
CourseSource also publishes laboratory lessons that can be performed in a variety of environments. For example, Mann and colleagues developed a hands-on activity about the effect of the plant hormone gibberellic acid (GA) on plant germination.

There are many more activities covering concepts such as linkage, insertion/deletion mutations, conservation biology, and genetically modified organisms. Having access to these high-quality, well-vetted active learning activities can help you with class preparation and provide new learning opportunities for your students.

About the author:

Michelle Smith is Editor in Chief of CourseSource and an Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at Cornell University.

Are you a postdoc looking for hands-on education experience and mentoring? Or a faculty member interested in bringing evidence-based, effective active learning strategies into your classroom? The PALM (Promoting Active Learning and Mentoring) network helps faculty and postdoctoral fellows gain hands-on experience and long-term mentorship in putting active learning strategies into practice.

GSA is proud to partner with the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) and the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) in the development of the PALM network. In addition to resources and support, the program provides up to $2000 mentoring visit expenses per fellow, $500 mentor stipend, and $1000 meeting travel each for both fellow and mentor.

We spoke to one of the first PALM fellows, Christopher Baker, and his PALM mentor Michelle Smith to learn about what makes this experience so valuable for both the mentors and mentees.

Christopher Baker

Baker is an Assistant Professor at the Jackson Laboratories (JAX). He was a PALM fellow during his postdoctoral training (also at JAX), working with Smith to design and teach classes at the University of Maine. He investigates the genetic and molecular regulatory system that controls the location and rate of meiotic recombination.

Michelle Smith

Smith is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Maine. She is a science education researcher whose work focuses on how to help students learn biology and how to help faculty adopt promising educational practices in their classrooms.

Why were you interested in the PALM program?

CB: At JAX, we don’t have as many teaching opportunities as at a university, although we do have a few options, including graduate classes and a college-level genetics course for JAX employees. I had interacted with Michelle a little in courses at JAX, including one for grad students and postdocs called “The Whole Scientist” that filled out training on the non-research aspects of being a scientist. Michelle talked to us about teaching and introduced the concept of active learning methods. I realized that meeting Michelle was a great opportunity, and she was someone who could help me get into the classroom and get some more experience. I observed her in the classroom and had asked about the possibility of teaching a few classes at U Maine. When we heard about the PALM fellowship, we thought it was the perfect chance to do just that.

MS: I knew about the PALM program through my involvement with the GSA [Smith serves on the GSA Education Committee]. I think instructional coaching opportunities are really valuable, and I was interested in providing that mentorship. Chris and I were thinking about doing something like this anyway, but we realized the PALM program would provide us with extra support and opportunities. It would allow us to see the project all the way through, from having an idea, collecting student learning data, and analyzing the data, to revising the classroom materials.

Why do you think the PALM program is important?

MS: It’s the next step in getting people into active learning 2.0. It’s been shown that active learning methods are more effective for students, but how do we actually get instructors to use them effectively in the classroom? Many instructors first become interested in active learning through a workshop or seminar, but when they try using the methods in their classes, they can get really bogged down in the logistics—like, how do I ask a clicker question? How long do I give them for discussion? PALM gives postdocs a chance to practice in an environment with someone there who’s got your back and can help out.

Chris, what teaching experience did you have before applying?

CB: I had never taught a course or given a lecture in a large-enrollment undergraduate setting, although I had helped teach some study sections. I had enjoyed giving public lectures and talking about my research at local middle schools, so even though I didn’t have formal experience, I did like the idea of teaching.

What was your goal?

CB: I wanted to get some first-hand experience of some of the active learning concepts that Michelle has helped pioneer, particularly the use of in-class clicker content questions that are accompanied by peer discussion. Basically, that’s giving the students a question and getting them to answer it, then getting them to talk among themselves in small groups and then answer again. That peer instruction gives them a chance to think through the question and to have to explain their reasoning aloud. I thought that interaction, and what it takes to facilitate it, was really interesting. I also generally wanted experience with putting together class activities that encourage students to interact with one another.

How did you work together?

CB: Michelle had a large-enrollment course in genetics with several classes on meiosis and recombination, which is what I was studying. So, we came up with concepts that we could build the classes around and made an outline. I spent some time putting together potential genetics problems that could be incorporated into clicker questions and reviewing and editing Michelle’s current lectures on the topics. Then we met over two full days to review my material, which was super helpful. We also used the time to flesh out the mechanics of what was going to happen in the classroom, how to manage technology and, hopefully, the class. I taught my lessons over two class periods in the same week. Having two classes was very helpful, as it allowed us to review how things went during the first class. It also gave me more confidence to relax into the role.

MS: One of the nice things was that, because there were times when the students were discussing clicker questions with each other, we could communicate while Chris was teaching—in real time. For example, after he’d asked a question, I could come up and say: “OK, here’s what we can do next”, or “maybe you could try this”, or “remind them about that”. Often when you try active learning for the first time, it can be really daunting to let the students talk to each other and volunteer their answers because you don’t know what to expect. It helps to have someone else there to say, “It’s OK, I’ve seen this before,” or “you’re probably going to get this answer.”

CB: That was really useful. I almost wish we could have the same thing for presenting at a research conference! Someone to say, “OK, let’s all take a break now.”

MS: The other thing that was important was involving the students in the process. There’s a lot involved in turning over your class to somebody new. At this point, it was midway through the semester, and active learning involves building a lot of trust with the students. To help with this, I talked to them about why Chris was coming, and told them about his expertise, and then at the end I asked the students to give him feedback. That was nice—he did a recombination demonstration with pool noodles, and they wrote about how that really helped them visualize the process. But it also helped the students to see Chris’ involvement as part of a larger plan and see themselves as partners in helping Chris out.

CB: One of the goals of the PALM fellowship is also to disseminate our experiences to the wider community. In part through support of the PALM program, Michelle and I attended The Allied Genetic Conference in 2016, which had a significant education component. We presented a poster incorporating analysis of the students’ and instructors’ time spent engaged in active versus passive learning, as well as student assessment and feedback.

How was this experience useful for your careers?

CB: When I was on the job market and interviewing at universities, I was often asked about the program. I think people were interested, particularly at places where active learning techniques hadn’t been promoted much in the past. It certainly caught people’s eye, and it was helpful. I ended up at an institute that’s primarily focused on research, and I don’t have an undergrad classroom, but I try hard to incorporate peer discussion into my graduate teaching. 

MS: A lot of times people focus on the benefits of these programs to the mentee, but there were a lot of benefits to me as well! For example, Chris taught about meiosis and recombination, which is his research area. I had been teaching meiosis and recombination for many years, but for me it had become a bit predictable, and I was using the same types of problems every time. It was great not only that he provided new content, but also that he helped me step back a bit and think about why we have students learn about this topic.

The experience also helped me think through what I actually do in the classroom. For example, there are things I do to get ready that are important to me—like making sure the slides are posted ahead of time or making sure I run through the clicker questions—but I hadn’t verbalized those aspects. I promote active learning, but what are the steps that are actually involved when you put it into practice? Having to reflect on that has really helped me with the education workshops I give.

For mentees, I’d also point out this program can open doors to publishing education research. For example, there are places like CourseSource where you can publish the activities you develop.

Do you have advice for people thinking of applying?

MS: My advice is if you’re at all interested, to go for it. If you’re concerned about finding a mentor, or don’t know where to start, I would encourage you to reach out to Sue Wick at the ASCB. She will help answer your questions, assist in finding a mentor, and help you solve problems. Don’t let anything on the application intimidate you.

CB: If you have any interest in teaching, it’s a really valuable experience to be involved in a program like this. Get involved and have fun; it will be worth it!

Learn more about the PALM network here!

Phil Hieter, former GSA President and a Co-Chair for The Allied Genetics Conference, works at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada, where Dave Ng directs the Michael Smith Laboratories Teaching Facility, AMBL. Dave developed a popular card game, Phylo, as a method to teach people about biodiversity, and Phil had an idea—what if there was a card game that highlighted the importance of model organism research?

Ultimately, GSA provided funding for several UBC summer interns to create the game mechanics and cards for a GSA Model Organisms Deck. Two undergraduates, Lu Li and Sam MacKinnon, and two graduate students, Sidney Ang and Genevieve Leduc-Robert, worked for several months fine-tuning the game and content, which then went through several rounds of editing and playtesting both within and beyond GSA. Dave hired several artists to make beautiful, unique art for the deck as well.

The GSA Model Organisms Deck will make its debut at The Allied Genetics Conference; thanks (again) to Phil’s pursuit of sponsorship partners, each TAGC attendee will receive their own deck free of charge! The GSA deck is designed to be educational; to that end, TAGC is also hosting several “Hackathons” as part of its Education Pre-Conference, not only showing participants how to play, but allowing them to use the deck to create lesson plans, new game mechanisms, and/or new cards for the deck. It’s not too late to register for this if you’re attending the meeting; simply email Anne Marie Mahoney for details.

But what is a Hackathon? What’s Phylo, and what makes the GSA deck special? We asked Dave Ng to fill us in:

What is Phylo?

Phylo began as a biodiversity-themed card game, and has been crowdsourced into existence. Because of the fluid nature of workshopping the game over the years, as well as the myriad of different expertise from the participating scientific communities, Phylo has turned into a STEM-based trading card culture with over 1000 free print-your-own cards, as well as around 15 decks that are purchasable for collecting and playing.  This includes decks that focus on specific geographical locales, women in science issues, phytochemicals, pond critters, things Darwin saw during his Beagle voyage, and the list goes on—and will continue to go on.

The GSA is releasing their deck at TAGC.  It’s awesome and all attendees will be getting a copy.

Can you tell me about the GSA Model Organisms Deck?

The GSA deck is special because it focuses on experimental narratives, particularly around model organisms. The primary rule set for the Phylo game is based on trophic connections (like a game of dominos, but you connect cards based on food chain considerations). Obviously, you can’t emulate this game mechanic with model organisms eating each other!  So we needed to create a new gameplay and a new set of rules for this deck.

These rules revolve around getting points by finishing your “projects,” which are completed by collecting the appropriate cards (including the organism(s) you’re working on, the methods you need to use, etc).  As this unfolds in the game, there are also cards that make project completion easier or harder—these reflect common occurrences in research culture (such as grant approval, sample contamination, switching projects, etc). You can also collaborate on projects by sharing cards. Definitely kudos to the design team, which was composed of genetics grad students and undergrads, as the gameplay is quite well done!

One of the current buzzwords in education is “game-based learning”—what are the benefits of using gaming in a learning environment?

The academic research that looks at game-based learning is still pretty young, and a bit amorphous to be honest. Most of the research is concerned with digital games, but there’s also growing interest in analog games (such as card games, board games, or tabletop role playing games like the GSA Phylo deck). Generally, the merits of using games lie in enhancing engagement, since concepts of “play” and narrative factor into engagement so strongly. Enhanced engagement can then, in turn, lead to better uptake of prescribed learning objectives.

One of the things that we’re most interested in researching is what happens when students “design” the game themselves. In other words, if you provide students with a framework that asks them to “make a game that somehow includes these learning outcomes” – what then? From our preliminary observations, where the framework suggests the production of an analog game with the prototyping done with paper and pen, it looks like this might work as a great exercise in inquiry-based learning. In their effort to create a game that makes the concepts fit, students end up really diving deep into the content. It’s quite a challenge to develop game mechanics that emulate a scientific concept, but it’s also fun to make a game, so the engagement and effort are still there.

It’s our hope that a game like the GSA  Model Organisms Deck  in Phylo can give teachers a hybrid experience: the deck can be used as an educational resource, as-is; or it can segue into lessons where students need to design modifications (“mods”) or expansion packs to introduce other genetic-themed concepts.

The game has playtested really well, but we’re particularly excited to see what educators can do with it. Phylo is very open to mods, which means that it can be used effectively in an educational space. This is why we’re hosting a few hackathons at the conference. I think with the calibre of folks in the genetics education space, we could come up with some pretty cool mods, and/or lesson plans to go with the game.

You are having a “Collaborative Hackathon” at TAGC—what’s a hackathon??

“Hackathon” typically describes an event where a group of experts converges and collaborates intensively. They are explicitly goal-oriented in that there is something tangible to deliver. Added to that, (and this is where it gets fun) hackathons largely thrive on doing all of this in an insanely short period of time, with lots of juggling of various factors, and with full realization that you have to make do with limited or no resources. Culturally, this is more about sweatpants and copious amounts of caffeine, rather than looking important and taking the expert out for dinner. It’s especially common in the technology sectors, notably in the culture of computer programming where the term “hack” originated—but these days hackathons are widely used in a variety of forms, involving a diverse range of different disciplines. If you can hack computer software, games, science, policy and artistry, why not teaching?

At the TAGC Education Pre-Conference Hackathons, we’ll spend the first 45 minutes focusing on the game: how it came to be, how it plays, and then actually playing with the GSA Model Organisms Phylo deck for a bit. After that, we’ll spend 15 minutes or so showing attendees what other groups and teachers have done with Phylo decks. Finally, everyone will put their pedagogy hats on and think about how they can incorporate the game into common genetics themed learning objectives. This may take the form of a designed lesson plan that asks students to dig a little deeper; it may take the form of thinking of new cards that focus on a particular scientific area (say, an expansion pack);  it may even involve thinking of entirely new games that borrow existing mechanics found in the GSA game.

That’s the beauty of this hackathon: anything goes, but there is the expectation that you will have something to show off. The other beauty, of course, is that it’s perfectly acceptable to fail at your final goal: indeed, in hackathon culture, the element of failure is a key component of this process, because it sets the stage for reiteration.

How can people get their hands on their own GSA Model Organism Phylo deck?
Thanks to Phil Hieter securing sponsorship from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences, the Michael Smith Laboratories at UBC, and the Rare Diseases: Models and Mechanisms Network, each attendee at The Allied Genetics Conference will receive a “Phylo GSA Starter Deck”—this is the full GSA Model Organism Phylo Deck as well as some blank cards allowing the addition of new organisms, projects, and methods.

For those not attending TAGC, the GSA Model Organisms Deck will also be available online at the Phylo website; people can download the cards and print them for free to make their own decks, or professionally printed decks will be available for (revenue-neutral) purchase.

Hackathon attendees will also get an account on the Phylo website, which will allow them to create DIY cards directly on the site!

Thanks to Dave Ng for spearheading this project and for taking the time to answer our questions. Also, thanks to the students who developed the original concept (Signey Ang, Genevieve Leduc-Robert, Lu Li, and Sam MacKinnon), and all those who have playtested the game. 

• Want to play with the GSA deck and collaborate on new cards, lesson plans, or game mechanics? Email Anne Marie Mahoney and ask to register for the Educator Flexpass, which will give you access to the TAGC Education Pre-Conference. The “Collaborative Hackathon” sessions will be held on Wednesday, July 13, 2016, from 9 am – 12 pm and again from 1 pm – 4 pm.
• We will post a link to the final online version of the GSA Model Organisms Phylo deck here as soon as it is live!

UPDATE: Here is the final deck! You can either download the printable version or buy a high-quality pack at a revenue-neutral price.

Finals are over, grades are turned in, and winter break is finally here! For better or worse, however, many people use “breaks” to catch up on all the things that have stacked up during the fall. If your idea of relaxation includes thinking about your next course (after all, advanced preparation can be a big stress reliever), then here are some ideas for you courtesy of GSA’s genetics learning framework, the GSA Peer Reviewed Education Portal, and its affiliated partners.

Use the Force

In this case, “the Force” is high-quality, peer-reviewed teaching resources that you can use to plan out your next semester. GSA PREP has some new resources!

• Looking for a way to help your students understand genetics and development? A laboratory by Shipman and Dobens, Using Fijiwings to Understand the Genetic Control of Cell Growth and Proliferation: A Computer-Based Laboratory Exercise, conveys the core concepts of gene expression and regulation, and in particular how genes control development, using a computer-based program to measure the effect of manipulating cell signaling on tissue and cell size. The resource can be used as-is for an intermediate level undergraduate course, or can be modified to either accommodate introductory level students or advanced students.

• A set of in-class exercises by Hood-Degrengier, Active Learning Workshops for Teaching Key Topics in Introductory Cell and Molecular Biology: Structure of DNA/RNA, Structure of Proteins, and Cell Division via Mitosis and Meiosis, consists of workshop materials that facilitate an active learning approach to teaching three core topics typically covered in introductory cell and molecular biology courses: DNA/RNA structure, protein structure, and cell division via both mitosis and meiosis.

Keep an eye out for other new resources in the beginning of 2016, there are several in the queue.

Yes, you can publish that, too!

If you have your spring semester all planned out, why not take some time in the lull of winter break and publish something great? (Or alternatively, settle down for a long winter’s nap, though that doesn’t look as nice on a CV).

Take some time to write up your classroom resources for GSA PREP or CourseSource, and give your student-centered learning materials a chance to shine. You’ll get something for your CV, and other educators will get a great idea to use in their classroom.

What’s the difference between GSA PREP and CourseSource? Both are based on the same learning framework (note: the CourseSource webpage may not be updated); both request submissions of resources that use evidence-based, effective teaching methods. Indeed, most resources published in one will be cross-posted in the other. CourseSource is an online, open access journal that publishes five types of articles; lessons must be written with such detail that educators should be able to replicate the activity exactly. GSA PREP is an online repository of resources, offering a DOI; unlike CourseSource, it is not a journal, and thus resources are not articles nor are they indexed in PubMed. The format of GSA PREP materials is more informal, requiring only a resource justification; otherwise, teaching materials may be submitted “as-is.”

Sharing is Caring

Bask in the glow of new year celebrations and give back to the education community by suggesting online resources for cataloging in GSA PREP. (This process will also help you procrastinate while you are writing up your own original resource for submission!) If you regularly use a resource in your class and think that everyone should do the same, suggest it via this form. This can include anything from videos, to presentation slides, to full teaching modules. Note that filling out the suggestion form is not a guarantee that the resource will be listed.

Don’t forget to PREP for the holidays and for your next course!