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Genetics Problem Spaces
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Student Projects |
Undergraduate Research An authentic research experience should be a part of every Biology student’s curriculum. Student involvement in the process of discovery has the ability to transform students into scientists. The Biology Department recognizes this and provides a range of options for undergraduate research (independent projects, the Biology Honors Program, Summer Research Fellowships). However, the majority of students fail to take advantage of these opportunities. They give a number of reasons. Many students are unaware of how valuable this experience would be for their academic program; other students are unsure of the time commitment required or if they have the ability to conduct real research; still others are unaware of research opportunities in the Department or are reluctant to approach individual faculty. The Biology Department is attempting to address all of these concerns. Realizing that many students are passing up the current opportunities, the Department has infused research experiences into a number of required and elective biology courses. Most biology courses at Buffalo State College have a required a laboratory component. These laboratory courses provide students hands-on experience in biology, introduce students to modern research techniques and provide students with inquiry-based activities. Many of these courses also include a structured laboratory research project. For the last 10 years in the Genetics course, students have been required to conduct an independent research project. With guidance from the instructor, each student developed his/her own research question, designed and conducted an experiment and reported the results in an oral presentation. Most students succeeded in designing an experiment and reporting the results. A weakness of the open approach was that students were not very scholarly in choosing a research question. Their question was often based on limited observations that they made during the semester. The research questions were rarely informed by the literature, were typically shallow and not very original. Not surprisingly, without a literature base, students were not able to discuss the broader significance of their results. This research experience had its value, but it was hardly an authentic research experience. The Genetics Problem Spaces are designed to improve the independent research projects in BIO303. A Problem Space is a way of organizing information and resources to support student centered inquiry. The concept was originally developed by the Bioquest Curriculum Consortium to introduce bioinformatics into the undergraduate curriculum. Here we have adapted the concept to support student research in other areas of biology. Each of the Genetics Problem Spaces is centered on an area of contemporary research in genetics. The areas include behavioral genetics of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, bias in codon usage in Eukaryotes, and the regulation of the arabinose operon of Escherichia coli. The Genetics Problem Spaces are composed of four elements. First, they provide background information on the research area including recent primary literature. Second, they have a traditional structured laboratory exercise to provide students with hands-on experience with the system. Third, they include a set of open research questions that students might address. Fourth, they outline the resources available in the Biology Department that students might used to investigate the research questions. We have three goals for the Genetics Problem Spaces.
Benefits of Undergraduate Research Ultimately, the reason that students do not pursue undergraduate research is that they do not appreciate how valuable it would be to their education. Therefore, it is worthwhile to briefly outline how a research experience can benefit a typical student.
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