2011 — 2015 |
Imondi, Ralph Santschi, Linda (co-PI) [⬀] |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Barcoding Life's Matrix: Engaging Students as Citizen Scientists in the Barcode of Life Initiative @ Coastal Marine Biolabs Integrative Biosciences Program
The Barcode of Life Initiative (BOLI) is an international biodiversity collaboration that creates a genetic encyclopedia of Earth's plants and animals using short DNA sequences that uniquely identify species groups. The goal of this strategies project is to interest students in STEM careers by engaging them in an international project to provide identification of biological species. This work builds on prior successful extended activities that immerse high school students and teachers in the real work of the scientific community to do DNA barcoding of flora and fauna in the Channel Islands kelp forest and marine protected areas. Over the three year period, nine cohorts of ten students each learn about DNA sequencing and developing barcodes of select fish and invertebrate species found within the Channel Island kelp forests in week-long residential camps. During each program session, guest scientists and other professionals expose students to career perspectives from a variety of scientific and professional workplace settings. Six five-day teacher professional development workshops enhance teachers' content and technical mastery.
In a second workshop, the teachers participate in the barcoding and practice their delivery of the content with students. At the end of the workshop, teachers receive the materials, equipment and supplies needed to guide students through the 16-unit curriculum closely aligned with state and national standards. These instructional modules describe how the concepts, tools, and skills are used to address basic questions, problems, and goals that characterize different segments of the 21st century workplace. They are implemented in high school laboratories, engaging another 2700 students. The connection between the student and teacher sessions will be varied to determine the most effective way to connect the teachers and the students.
A Barcoding for Citizen Scientists Portal, a distributed bioinformatics platform, is developed to serve as a user interface for non-professionals engaged in DNA barcoding. Data that meet or exceed quality standards are eligible for export to the professional database. The evaluation measures the extent to which students increase their attitude toward science, their scientific knowledge, skills and critical reasoning abilities, and their ability to apply a variety of technological tools in scientific investigations. Also investigated is the increased ability of teachers to transform their science curriculum to engage students in the process of science and increase their interest in pursuing STEM careers. The project also provides the STEM community with new genetic tools, databases and instructional models for engaging in and teaching science.
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2014 — 2018 |
Imondi, Ralph Santschi, Linda Anita (co-PI) [⬀] |
R25Activity Code Description: For support to develop and/or implement a program as it relates to a category in one or more of the areas of education, information, training, technical assistance, coordination, or evaluation. |
Neurolab M3: Discovery-Based Explorations of Scientific Models, Model Organisms,
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): NeuroLab M3 is a comprehensive research education program that carefully guides high school students through an interrelated series of in-depth, interdisciplinary, and discovery-based explorations of scientific models, model organisms, and model systems in developmental neuroscience. Supported by a broad and inclusive professional partnership network consisting of top-flight biomedical research scientists, neuroinformaticians, and educational media and science communication experts, the program delineates a coherent and thoughtfully conceived learning progression that engages students in core scientific practices within and among distinct but interrelated research-based learning environments. Immersive residential research institutes in comparative functional genomics will engage 150 high school students in a complete and integrated scientific workflow that provides novel opportunities for them to expand the repertoire of tools that are currently available for scientists to investigate fundamental aspects of neural development, including neuronal specification and axon pathfinding. Through our collaboration with the Neuroscience Information Framework, a broad-scale neuroinformatics and resource access initiative enabled by the NIH Blueprint, the NeuroLab M3 program also presents new opportunities for students to meaningfully partake in the practices of data sharing, management, annotation, and analytics. More specifically, in addition to generating authentic and novel scientific data that is of practicl value to the biomedical research community, students will disseminate their findings through a public-access image resource database that is jointly maintained by the American Society for Cell Biology and the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research. Residential research experiences hosted at our harbor-based learning laboratory will constitute part of a student learning progression that culminates in 8-week university research internships offered through a regional network of biomedical partner laboratories at the University of California (UC), Los Angeles, California Institute of Technology, UC Irvine, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, UC, San Diego, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Collectively, these experiences are intended to stimulate and bolster interest in biomedical career pathways, foster realistic career expectations, cultivate an understanding of crosscutting concepts and core scientific practices, and enhance science process skills. A third project component seeks to achieve many of these outcomes by engaging large numbers of teachers and students in the use of an innovative, game-based learning interactive that leads them through the basic to applied research continuum and into visually compelling explorations of the scientific model-building enterprise. Developed in collaboration with NSF award-winning gaming experts, this public-access resource will employ an embedded suite of cutting-edge assessment metrics, data tracking tools, and other analytics to evaluate how students collect, analyze, assimilate, and apply new knowledge to complete interactive missions organized around basic neuroscience research and current models of axon pathfinding.
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2019 — 2021 |
Imondi, Ralph Santschi, Linda Anita (co-PI) [⬀] |
R25Activity Code Description: For support to develop and/or implement a program as it relates to a category in one or more of the areas of education, information, training, technical assistance, coordination, or evaluation. |
Neurolab: Adapting An Authentic Ise Experience For High School Course Integration and Positive Stem Outcomes
Project Summary/Abstract Authentic residential research experiences form a cornerstone of NeuroLab, an informal science education (ISE) project that bridges developmental neuroscience and comparative genomics, and provides novel opportunities for high school students to identify new molecular genetic tools to study nervous system connectivity. These advanced ISE experiences unfold during residential summer institutes hosted at our biosciences laboratory with small cohorts of predominantly female students. The proposed effort is intended to scale the positive educational impacts of the NeuroLab pilot project by connecting significantly larger numbers of high school students, particularly those from traditionally underserved groups, to successful elements of this advanced learning experience. To this end, the project places high school teachers at the center of three highly collaborative work aims involving an exceptionally diverse group of science professionals. In the earliest phase of the project, teachers will work with neuroscientists, curriculum experts, and NGSS specialists on curriculum revisions that conform to evidence-based best practices. Curriculum strategies and products that emerge from this phase will be used to support in-depth professional development (PD) instruction. PD is aimed at promoting subject mastery, technical proficiency, and transformative changes in teaching practices that translate into positive learning outcomes during enactment of an authentic, course-based research experience for high school students.
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