New York University (NYU) has received an Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Education and Human Resources Directorate (IUSE: EHR) Exploration and Design award for a project to develop inexpensive time-lapse photography tool to allow the study of plant movement (tropisms, oscillations, growth, etc.) for practicing scientists, as well as for undergraduate students in the classroom. Through a collaborative effort among plant molecular biologists, engineers with expertise in motion, and digital educational scientists, the PI team from NYU is designing, developing, and disseminating a mobile app, Plant Tracer, to quantify plant movement from time-lapse videos in an associated undergraduate teaching environment.
The PI team is using the capabilities of Plant Tracer to advantage by developing inquiry-based laboratories that allow students to participate in authentic research studies on gravitropism (movement of a plant in response to gravity) and circumnutation (movements of the growing portions of plants to form spirals or ellipses). Using the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, students are dissecting the mechanisms underlying these behaviors at a molecular level. Plant Tracer permits high-throughput, low-cost analysis that allows students to identify new mutants undetected in previous work. A collection of genetically altered Arabidopsis germplasm is being developed to allow students to use a crowd-sourcing approach to isolate these mutants. The project, which involves students from six universities, is motivating student interest in plant biology and enhancing student learning outcomes. At the same time, the data that are collected by the students are advancing our knowledge of genetics that govern gravitropism and circumnutation.
This project is being jointly supported by the NSF Division of Undergraduate Education and the NSF Division of Biological Infrastructure as it aligns with an important subset of the objectives of both divisions that is expressed in the "Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education" effort (see http://visionandchange.org/).
