National efforts to improve equitable teaching practices in biology education have led to an increase in research on the barriers to student participation and performance, as well as solutions for overcoming these barriers. Fewer studies have examined the extent to which the resulting data trends and effective strategies are generalizable across multiple contexts or are specific to individual classrooms, institutions, or geographic regions. To address gaps in our understanding, as well as to establish baseline information about students across contexts, a working group associated with a research coordination network (Equity and Diversity in Undergraduate STEM, EDU-STEM) convened in Las Vegas, Nevada, in November of 2019. We addressed the following objectives: 1) characterize the present state of equity and diversity in undergraduate biology education research; 2) address the value of a network of educators focused on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics equity; 3) summarize the status of data collection and results; 4) identify and prioritize questions and interventions for future collaboration; and 5) construct a recruitment plan that will further the efforts of the EDU-STEM research coordination network. The report that follows is a summary of the conclusions and future directions from our discussion.

On average, active learning improves student achievement in college science courses, yet may present challenges for students with disabilities. In this essay, we review the history of accommodating students with disabilities in higher education, highlight how active learning may not always be inclusive of college science students with disabilities, and articulate three questions that could guide research as the science community strives to create more inclusive environments for undergraduates with disabilities: 1) To what extent do stakeholders (disability resource center [DRC] directors, instructors, and students) perceive that students with disabilities encounter challenges in active learning? 2) What accommodations, if any, do stakeholders perceive are being provided for students with disabilities in active learning? and 3) What steps can stakeholders take to enhance the experiences of students with disabilities in active learning? To provide an example of how data can be collected to begin to answer these questions, we interviewed 37 DRC directors and reported what challenges they perceive that students with disabilities experience in active learning and the extent to which accommodations are used to alleviate challenges. We conclude the essay with a suite of recommendations to create more inclusive active-learning college science classes for students with disabilities.

Biology research is becoming increasingly dependent on large-scale, “big data,” networked research initiatives. At the same time, there has been a corresponding effort to expand undergraduate participation in research to benefit student learning and persistence in science. This essay examines the confluence of this trend through eight years of a collaboration within a successful biology research network that explicitly incorporates undergraduates into large-scale scientific research. We draw upon interviews with faculty in this network to consider the interplay of scientific and pedagogical objectives at the heart of this undergraduate-focused network research project. We identify ways that this network has expanded and diversified access to scientific knowledge production for faculty and students and examine a goal conflict that emerged around the dual objectives of mentoring emerging scientists while producing high-quality scientific data for the larger biology community. Based on lessons learned within this network, we provide three recommendations that can support institutions and faculty engaging in networked research projects with undergraduates: (1) establish rigorous protocols to ensure data and database quality, (2) protect personnel time to coordinate network and scientific processes, and (3) select appropriate partners and establish explicit expectations for specific collaborations.

This study measured student engagement in real time through the use of skin biosensors, specifically galvanic skin response (GSR), in a large undergraduate lecture classroom. The study was conducted during an intervention in an introductory-level biology course (N = 420) in which one section of the course was taught with active-learning approaches and the other with traditional didactic teaching. GSR results were aligned and correlated with the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM, or COPUS, and student self-reflections on their own engagement. Results showed that the active-learning section spent more time working in groups, resulting in GSR measures that trended higher and self-reported engagement, while showing indications of higher content learning gains compared with the traditional lecture section. Comparisons between COPUS scores and GSR readings indicate that engagement increased during group work and decreased during listening activities. Throughout a class period, GSR activity of the active-learning group showed increased trends compared with baseline measures, while the traditional lecture group showed decreased trends. Results indicate that GSR is a promising measure of real-time student engagement in the undergraduate classroom, bringing a new technique to discipline-based education researchers who aim to better measure student engagement; however, some limitations exist for broad-scale implementation.

This article describes an equity-focused professional learning community that used the EQUIP observation protocol to provide data analytics to instructors. The learning community met during Spring 2020, and due to the global coronavirus pandemic, it moved online midsemester. This article describes patterns of student participation and how they were impacted in moving online. We found that student participation dropped significantly in moving online, but instructors were able to implement new teaching strategies to increase participation. We document seven concrete strategies that instructors used to promote equitable participation in their online classes and that can be incorporated by biology educators into their online teaching. The strategies were: 1) re-establishing norms, 2) using student names, 3) using breakout rooms, 4) leveraging chat-based participation, 5) using polling software, 6) creating an inclusive curriculum, and 7) cutting content to maintain rigor. In addition, we describe the faculty learning process and how EQUIP data and the learning community environment supported instructors to change their practices.

To excel in modern science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers, biology majors need a range of transferable skills, yet competency development is often a relatively underdeveloped facet of the undergraduate curriculum. We have elaborated the Vision and Change core competency framework into a resource called the BioSkills Guide, a set of measurable learning outcomes that can be more readily implemented by faculty. Following an iterative review process including more than 200 educators, we gathered evidence of the BioSkills Guide’s content validity using a national survey of more than 400 educators. Rates of respondent support were high (74.3–99.6%) across the 77 outcomes in the final draft. Our national sample during the development and validation phases included college biology educators representing more than 250 institutions, including 73 community colleges, and a range of course levels and biology subdisciplines. Comparison of the BioSkills Guide with other science competency frameworks reveals significant overlap but some gaps and ambiguities. These differences may reflect areas where understandings of competencies are still evolving in the undergraduate biology community, warranting future research. We envision the BioSkills Guide supporting a variety of applications in undergraduate biology, including backward design of individual lessons and courses, competency assessment development, and curriculum mapping and planning.

Research suggests there are potential benefits to students when taught by instructors who share the same gender and/or race/ethnicity. While underrepresented students have shown increased persistence and academic performance when they were taught by gender- and/or race/ethnicity-congruent faculty, there is little research that has explored the influence of matching for graduate student teaching assistants (GTAs). Given that science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) GTAs spend a significant amount of time with undergraduates, measurable impacts on student outcomes have the potential to contribute to the success of undergraduates who have been underrepresented in STEM fields. This study evaluated the effects on academic performance of GTA (n = 50) matching for first-year students (n = 976) in an introductory biology lab course at a Hispanic-serving institution. There was no significant difference in academic performance for students who matched with the gender, race/ethnicity, income, and first-generation status of their GTAs. Results were consistent across multiple cohorts of students, after including statistical controls for prior academic performance and other demographic characteristics and accounting for the nested structure of the data. These results suggest there is a need of supporting GTAs to develop more effective teaching practices and to consider effects of GTA matching on other outcomes.

Summer undergraduate research experience (SURE) programs are proven interventions that provide undergraduate students with opportunities to develop research skills under the mentorship of a faculty member. These are essential programs, particularly for members of underrepresented minorities, because SUREs are known to broaden their participation and increase retention. We present the results of a study investigating the influence of faculty mentorship quality on the quality of research presentations for undergraduate students attending a 10-week, distributed, multi-institutional SURE program focused on biomedical research training. Upon returning to the home institution, students presented research posters at a local symposium. Poster presentations were judged using a scale validated as part of this project. Combining collected information on student demographics and their self-reported assessments of research gains and belonging to the scientific community, we made use of data analytics methodologies to appropriately merge and analyze the data to address the overarching research question: What are the independent and combined effects of the quality of faculty mentorship and student characteristics on the quality of SURE student poster presentations? Results show that faculty mentor quality functions as a moderating influence for student characteristics on research presentation quality. Implications and recommendations for SURE program implementation are discussed.

The evolution education experiences of students of color represent an emerging area of research, because past inquiries indicate these students have differential outcomes, such as lower evolution acceptance and severe underrepresentation in evolutionary biology. Religion is often an important support for students of color who are navigating a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics culture that privileges White nonreligious students. For instance, religion helps mitigate the negative effects of racism, but religious students are also more likely to experience conflict when learning evolution. In this nationwide study, we examined the extent to which strong religiosity among students of color can explain their lower evolution acceptance. We surveyed students in 77 college biology courses across 17 states and found that Black/African American students tend to be more religious and less accepting of evolution than any other racial/ethnic identity group and that Hispanic students tend to be slightly more religious and slightly less accepting of evolution than White students. Importantly, we find that religious background is an important factor associated with Black and Hispanic students’ lower levels of evolution acceptance. This study suggests that the biology community should become more inclusive of Christian religious students if it wishes to foster inclusive evolution education for Black and Hispanic students.

Making direct connections between humanity and the environment is of ever-increasing importance in the context of today’s environmental crisis. We used qualitative content analysis of precollege- and college-level introductory environmental science textbook case studies to study how they portray humanity’s link to the environment. We assessed case studies for how specific and data rich they are and for how they link together daily life, human impact, and ecological interactions. We found that, for many textbooks, case study stories were vaguely drawn and included few data. We also found that, for all textbooks, case studies almost always described human impacts without linking to their ecological underpinnings and daily life connections were frequently missing from human impact discussion. We use comparisons of case studies to make the argument that data and specific details tell more fleshed-out relatable stories, that connecting to daily life will more likely challenge student perceptions of people as separate from the environment, and that explicit inclusion of ecological interactions into environmental stories better explains how people connect to and impact the rest of the living world.

Active learning is frequently used to describe teaching practices, but the term is not well-defined in the context of undergraduate biology education. To clarify this term, we explored how active learning is defined in the biology education literature (n = 148 articles) and community by surveying a national sample of biology education researchers and instructors (n = 105 individuals). Our objectives were to increase transparency and reproducibility of teaching practices and research findings in biology education. Findings showed the majority of the literature concerning active learning never defined the term, but the authors often provided examples of specific active-learning strategies. We categorized the available active-learning definitions and strategies obtained from the articles and survey responses to highlight central themes. Based on data from the BER literature and community, we provide a working definition of active learning and an Active-Learning Strategy Guide that defines 300+ active-learning strategies. These tools can help the community define, elaborate, and provide specificity when using the term active learning to characterize teaching practices.

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) defines translational science as “the field of investigation focused on understanding the scientific and operational principles underlying each step of the translational process.” A major goal of translational science is to determine commonalities across projects to identify principles for addressing persistent bottlenecks in this process. To meet this goal, translational scientists must be conversant in multiple disciplines, work in teams, and understand the larger translational science ecosystem. The development of these skills through translational science training opportunities, such as the translational science training offered by the NCATS intramural research program, prepares fellows for a variety of career options. The unique structure of the NCATS intramural program and the career outcomes of its alumni are described herein to demonstrate the distinct features of this training environment, the productivity of fellows during their time in training, and how this prepares fellows to be competitive for a variety of science careers. To date, the NCATS intramural research program has trained 213 people, ranging from high school to postdoctoral levels. These alumni have transitioned into a wide array of career functions, types, and sectors.

For decades, studies have revealed students’ decreasing interest in science. Extracurricular learning opportunities—the Science Olympiads being a publicly well-known example—are an important means identified to tackle this challenge and help students further differentiate their interests. Better understanding the underlying constructs and characteristics of Science Olympiad exams can provide several implications not just for Science Olympiads, but also science education more broadly, for example, with regard to how the competitions’ international juries defines expectations for high performance in the life sciences. This study analyzes exams set by the International Biology Olympiad (IBO) as an example for a top-tier international competition in the life sciences. The findings extend previous works on test item characteristics toward student competitions and high-performer education. We conducted a systematic analysis of N = 703 closed-ended and laboratory test items from six IBO assessment years across the competition’s history. A categorical framework was developed to analyze items according to four areas: formal characteristics, content and practices, cognitive aspects, and the use of representations. Our findings highlight assessment characteristics used to challenge high-performing students. We derive implications for general life sciences education, as well as for further developing the assessments of Science Olympiads.

Past research on group work has primarily focused on promoting change through implementation of interventions designed to increase performance. Recently, however, education researchers have called for more descriptive analyses of group interactions. Through detailed qualitative analysis of recorded discussions, we studied the natural interactions of students during group work in the context of a biology laboratory course. We analyzed multiple interactions of 30 different groups as well as data from each of the 91 individual participants to characterize the ways students engage in discussion and how group dynamics promote or prevent meaningful discussion. Using a set of codes describing 15 unique behaviors, we determined that the most common behavior seen in student dialogue was analyzing data, followed by recalling information and repeating ideas. We also classified students into one of 10 different roles for each discussion, determined by their most common behaviors. We found that, although students cooperated with one another by exchanging information, they less frequently fully collaborated to explain their conclusions through the exchange of reasoning. Within this context, these findings show that students working in groups generally choose specific roles during discussions and focus on data analysis rather than constructing logical reasoning chains to explain their conclusions.

Reasoning about visual representations in science requires the ability to control one’s attention, inhibit attention to irrelevant or incorrect information, and hold information in mind while manipulating it actively—all aspects of the limited-capacity cognitive system described as humans’ executive functions. This article describes pedagogical intuitions on best practices for how to sequence visual representations among pre-service teachers, adult undergraduates, and middle school children, with learning also tested in the middle school sample. Interestingly, at all ages, most people reported beliefs about teaching others that were different from beliefs about how they would learn. Teaching beliefs were most often that others would learn better from presenting representations one at a time, serially; while learning beliefs were that they themselves would learn best from simultaneous presentations. Students did learn best from simultaneously presented representations of mitosis and meiosis, but only when paired with self-explanation prompts to discuss the relationships between the graphics. These results provide new recommendations for helping students draw connections across visual representations, particularly mitosis and meiosis, and suggest that science educators would benefit from shifting their teaching beliefs to align with beliefs about their own learning from multiple visual representations.