(Biological Sciences 61) The University of Maryland College Park and Montgomery County Community College, Rockville are working together in order to engage students in deep and research oriented learning of microbiology with an emphasis in host pathogen interactions (HPI). The project is expanding the HPI teaching community to include faculty from community colleges; developing new activities to engage students in research-oriented learning of HPI; creating comprehensive teaching materials in support of these new activities; and evaluating the effectiveness of the new HPI teaching activities. At the University of Maryland College Park (UMCP), faculty with research and teaching expertise in the area of HPI have formed a teaching community that is actively working on undergraduate science education reform and has generated teaching and assessment tools (13 HPI Concepts and a HPI Concept Inventory). The project brings the research process and questions to the undergraduate classroom and engages students in authentic experiences involving analysis of primary data or the generation of data from model organisms or mock samples. The activities are being designed for use in introductory microbiology courses offered at the UMCP and at Maryland community colleges, but can serve as a model for other institutions. A three day planning workshop kicks-off the year of activities designed to address the process of science, engage a diversity of learning styles and encourage critical thinking. Assessment of student learning utilizes an existing HPI concept inventory, questions from a published "Views on Science and Technology in Society" survey, and student performance in poster presentations.
The intellectual merit of this proposal resides in the project's intent to engage research faculty in taking the most interesting data and problems from their research programs to form authentic learning activities for undergraduates. The topics of research conducted by faculty involved in this project represent current and pressing issues of microbiology including emerging infectious disease, genomics, and vaccine development and offer the potential to engage students in discussion of the societal benefits of conducting basic research. Learning via these activities engages undergraduate students in the process of research science by involving them in data analysis or data generation, followed by data interpretation, and critical thinking. Senior graduate students are collaborating with faculty in the development, implementation and assessment of activities and developing teaching and communication skills.
The broader impacts of this project lie in its potential to act as a model for development, assessment and dissemination of an effective approach to teaching of science using student engagement in research as the vehicle. Although the project activities concentrate on HPI, the model has the potential to be used widely for different research topics. The project expands the HPI UMCP community to involve community college faculty in order to widen the reach of the activities to a broad and diverse audience. The activities generated are being disseminated through an online digital library.
