Bioinformatic Teaching Resources – For Educators, by Educators – Using KBase, a Free, User-Friendly, Open Source Platform

Over the past year, biology educators and staff at the U.S. Department of Energy Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) initiated a collaborative effort to develop a curriculum for bioinformatics education. KBase is a free web-based platform where anyone can conduct sophisticated and reproducible bioinformatic analyses via a graphical user interface. Here, we demonstrate the utility of KBase as a platform for bioinformatics education, and present a set of modular, adaptable, and customizable instructional units for teaching concepts in Genomics, Metagenomics, Pangenomics, and Phylogenetics. Each module contains teaching resources, publicly available data, analysis tools, and Markdown capability, enabling instructors to modify the lesson as appropriate for their specific course. We present initial student survey data on the effectiveness of using KBase for teaching bioinformatic concepts, provide an example case study, and detail the utility of the platform from an instructor’s perspective. Even as in-person teaching returns, KBase will continue to work with instructors, supporting the development of new active learning curriculum modules. For anyone utilizing the platform, the growing KBase Educators Organization provides an educators network, accompanied by community-sourced guidelines, instructional templates, and peer support, for instructors wishing to use KBase within a classroom at any educational level–whether virtual or in-person.

The Data Sensor Hub (DaSH): A Physical Computing System to Support Middle School Inquiry Science Instruction

This article describes a sensor-based physical computing system, called the Data Sensor Hub (DaSH), which enables students to process, analyze, and display data streams collected using a variety of sensors. The system is built around the portable and affordable BBC micro:bit microcontroller (expanded with the gator:bit), which students program using a visual, cloud-based programming environment intended for novices. Students connect a variety of sensors (measuring temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide, sound, acceleration, magnetism, etc.) and write programs to analyze and visualize the collected sensor data streams. The article also describes two instructional units intended for middle grade science classes that use this sensor-based system. These inquiry-oriented units engage students in designing the system to collect data from the world around them to investigate scientific phenomena of interest. The units are designed to help students develop the ability to meaningfully integrate computing as they engage in place-based learning activities while using tools that more closely approximate the practices of contemporary scientists as well as other STEM workers. Finally, the article articulates how the DaSH and units have elicited different kinds of teacher practices using student drawn modeling activities, facilitating debugging practices, and developing place-based science practices.

Which Came First: Literacy or Social Studies? How Primary Sources Can Bridge the Divide

Due to the implementation of No Child Left Behind and the Common Core State Standards, disciplinary literacy has become a vital component of social studies instruction in middle and secondary classrooms. This paper determines the degree to which nine middle and high school social studies teachers were successful in designing integrated learning experiences for their students after attending professional development. Data from semi-structured interviews, teachers’ instructional units, workshop surveys and field notes were collected and analyzed for the qualitative study. The study considers how teachers’ instructional units incorporated primary sources to support students’ foundational literacy skills, scaffolded disciplinary understanding, historical analysis, and highlighted community issues that connected their lived experiences to broader social concerns.

The Contribution of Meta-Cognitive Guidance to Building Geometry Teaching Units and Improving Classroom Teaching Processes

In this paper, we examine the importance of building instructional units that incorporate metacognition intent processes that contribute to the development of geometric thinking. We show that the implementation of metacognition processes in the initial stages of constructing tailored instructional units will improve students’ geometric ability. The study was performed on middle school mathematics teachers of the ninth grade. The experiment we conducted shows that building instructional units that incorporate metacognition intent benefit learning processes on two levels: First, in the subject matter. Second, they contribute to a deeper understanding that improves student’s ability to connect related subjects to mathematical geometry. moreover, we will present a practical model that incorporates different aspects that could operate a guideline for middle school mathematics teachers.

Increasing Diversity of Japanese Language Teachers: Approaches to Teaching-Related Professional Development for College Students in North America

The purpose of this article is to share approaches to raise undergraduate student awareness and understanding of Japanese foreign language (JFL) teaching careers, which might increase the number and diversity of our students who become teachers. These strategies, presented with examples from the Japanese program at <Institution Name>, are presented in order of ease of implementation, including 1) advisement to provide a space to consider JFL teaching as a possible career and to share share accurate information about JFL teaching opportunities and qualifications 2) guest lectures by local JFL teachers, 3) instructional units related to Japanese teaching and learning, 4) a new Japanese teaching-related internship program where students can get experience helping in a JFL classroom, and 5) courses on Japanese applied linguistics, including a newly-developed course on foreign language teaching methods featuring JFL in North American and EFL in Japan.

Geoscience Curriculum: Approach Through Learning Taxonomy and Outcome Based Education

Learning outcomes are inevitably to be declared by any university and educational institution at every level of their programmes. It should have a general scheme for all programmes regardless of the discipline specificities, individual courses or even independent instructional units. Such outcomes are stated at different levels based on the taxonomy of learning adopted in each scheme. People follow different learning taxonomies for stating course contents, designing the assessment items and measuring the attainment. In this work, revised Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001) has been adopted as a classic model to express different cognitive levels in outcome statements and assessment items. This has been demonstrated here based on an 80 credit postgraduate programme in geology offered by state universities and autonomous institutions. This article presents outcome statements and assessment items for three courses of the programme, namely (a) Biostratigraphy and Palaeontology, (b) Metamorphic Petrology and (c) Structural Geology, which can be ideal specimen for adopting the learning taxonomy and outcome-based education in any similar disciplines of educational programmes.

On researching activity tracking to support learning: a retrospective

Purpose This paper aims to discuss research and design of learning activities involving activity tracking and wearable activity tracking technology. Design/methodology/approach Three studies are summarized as part of a program of research that sought to design new learning activities for classroom settings. The first used data from a qualitative interview study of adult athletes who self-track. The second used video excerpts from a designed learning activity with a group of fifth grade elementary students. The third study draws largely on quantitative assessment data from an activity tracking unit enactment in a rural sixth grade class. Findings Activity tracking appears to provide opportunities for establishing benchmarks and calibration opportunities related to intensity of physical activities. Those features of activity tracking can be leveraged to develop learning activities where elementary students discover features of data and how data are affected by different distributions. Students can show significant improvement related to statistical reasoning in classroom instructional units that centralize the use of self-tracked data. Originality/value As activity tracking is becoming a more ubiquitous practice with increased pervasiveness and familiarity with mobile and wearable technologies, this paper demonstrates a topical intersection between the information and learning sciences, illustrates how self-tracking can be recruited for instructional settings, and it discusses concerns that have emerged in the past several years as the technology related to activity tracking begins to be used for educational purposes.

Planning Curriculum for Teaching Thinking Skills Needed for 21st Century Education

This chapter provides a method for meeting the educational demands of the 21st century. The Content through Action method (CTA) provides a process to plan integrated instructional units for connecting various subject matter areas. Based on the researcher's experience in designing interdisciplinary units, the chapter includes the CTA process of building a unit and the research-based rationale behind each step of the process. The literature review includes discussion of the Four Cs, the 21st-century classroom, the motivation of learners, and the teacher's role. The theoretical framework is built on the foundation provided by constructivism, heutagogy, design thinking, the theory of change, and the growth mindset. After teaching other methods such as problem-based and design-based learning, the author asserts that the CTA method of instructional planning promotes the development of thinking skills compatible with the needs of the 21st-century learner.