Transdisciplinary learning—where students develop and apply knowledge from multiple disciplines to solve open-ended problems—is necessary to prepare students for the most pressing real-world problems. Because transdisciplinary education often requires reimagining the content and design of undergraduate science courses, it can be a challenge for instructors to envision how such work might take place. With this paper, we share an example of an undergraduate course developed at the intersection of animal sensory biology and robotics engineering. Students in the course developed knowledge from both disciplines to design a robot that could mimic the sensory behaviors of some animal to achieve a pre-determined task. We share examples of students’ work in the course and evidence of how students’ perceptions of science and engineering changed throughout their participation in the course. Additionally, we describe how we adapted a hybrid hybrid model of collaboration that made it feasible for students to work together on an open-ended project requiring access to robotics equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic. This course can serve as a model for instructors working to incorporate more interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary perspectives into existing science courses.

There is a growing need for college science faculty to teach a diverse group of learners. The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework can be used to create inclusive learning materials and activities in the higher education science classroom. A UDL Academy introduced science faculty to the UDL framework, which led to them implementing UDL in their classes. A chemistry and physics professor and an environmental science and biology professor participated in the UDL Academy during the summer of 2021 and implemented UDL in at least one course during the fall 2021 semester. They share their perspectives on the UDL implementations and implications for college science teaching.

The science education community is deeply vested in growing the next generation of scientists. One way to do this is through evidence-based interventions that support the motivation and performance of students in introductory classes. The literature is replete with interdisciplinary research presenting such interventions. Unfortunately, the process of developing and evaluating pedagogical practices is not the same as the process required to scale those efforts into actual university classrooms. Efforts to spread the word about successful practices often move slowly, through relatively small personal and professional networks. We present a complementary proactive strategy designed to raise awareness of one exemplar intervention across a broad swath of U.S. biology faculty. Our 30-minute anonymous engagement (in three 10-minute asynchronous virtual sessions) resulted in this particular intervention being adopted in some form by more than 4 in 10 of faculty who learned about it, reaching an estimated 7,500 students across the U.S. We describe the three phases of our intervention adoption process, each informed by social psychology theories of persuasion and decision-making, and provide a detailed guide and ready-to-use resources to replicate the process using other evidence-based interventions ready for scale.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak mandated a rapid transition to online classes with little warning. Previous literature studying the effect of this sudden shift demonstrated enormous impacts on instructors and students. However, the details concerning science instructor assessment choices during this time are less clear. We asked biology instructors to reflect on the changes they made to their assessments of student learning during the emergency transition to remote instruction in spring of 2020 and whether the potential changes were motivated by equity concerns. We also asked that instructors describe the assessment changes they intended to keep in future semesters. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses, we found that instructors removed forms of assessment more often than they added them, and the most common changes included how instructors administered exams and engaged students through participation. Instructors reported that equity concerns motivated their decision-making, particularly their concern over students’ ability to access learning resources. Instructors indicated they would keep many of the changes they made in response to COVID-19. Our research shows the pandemic dramatically altered how instructors assessed students in biology, but equity-based decisions leading to lasting change may be one positive outcome for future students.

The Learning Assistant (LA) Program is a near-peer teaching model with three key components: 1) reevaluation of curriculum and lesson design to incorporate undergraduate LAs as a central part of the course, 2) a seminar attended by first-time LAs where they learn about education theory, and 3) weekly meetings where LAs and course instructors reflect on previous weeks and prepare for upcoming lessons. Thus, faculty instructors collaborate with undergraduate students who have introductory pedagogical knowledge to improve curricula. In this study, we surveyed faculty to understand how they characterize their conversations with their LA teaching partners and perceive the impact of LAs on their approach to teaching. We found that faculty discuss course content and pedagogy with their LAs and believe that LAs provide new viewpoints that inform their own teaching. Additionally, faculty believe working with LAs led to spending more class time on student-centered active learning activities. This provides new perspectives on the mutually beneficial nature of the LA-faculty relationship, including evidence that working with LAs confers professional development for faculty. Furthermore, we present a potential mechanism by which the LA model improves student outcomes by stimulating a shift toward evidence-based teaching methods.

Student self-assessment surveys were utilized to look at student study habits in several areas. Both self-reported study time and study methods were explored. Surveys were given to students after receiving their graded exams. When compared to the federal definition for a credit hour (two hours outside of class for each hour spent in class), it was found that most students study less than the minimum recommended study time. Little difference in reported study hours was seen between high performing students and low performing students (who reported the highest amount of study time). When broken into methods of study, higher performing students reported higher percentages of time in active study methods (e.g., attempting practice problems) while lower performing students spent more time in more passive study methods (e.g. reviewing lecture notes). Additionally, students were asked to analyze why they lost points on examinations in a number of different categories. Lower performing students were able to recognize the reasons for their performance (attributing much of their performance to reasons such as not understanding terms, or not understanding concepts) but were not able to use it to increase future performance.

Pedagogical approaches for supporting students’ argumentative writing in science laboratories have not been fully established. This paper examines the development of argumentative abilities in undergraduate students enrolled in chemistry laboratory courses that employed two teaching sequences: (1) an argumentative writing workshop for conceptual learning and (2) weekly laboratory report writing for application of knowledge gained in the workshop. The four workshop modules guided students through the process of identifying three key components of arguments (evidence, justifications and claims), selecting appropriate and inappropriate justifications, constructing justifications and conclusions, and analyzing experimental errors. Student performance in formulating scientific arguments was evaluated through instructors’ assessment of evidence used in Results, justifications provided in Discussion and claims made in Conclusions of a laboratory report. Student performance improved from 60.9±3.4 to 91.5±8.0 in Introductory Chemistry I Lab and 60.7±5.2 to 91.7±5.4 in Introductory Chemistry II Lab. Students rated the helpfulness of the writing workshop [(3.6±0.1)/5.0], weekly writing [(4.1±0.3)/5.0] and instructors’ feedback [(4.4 ± 0.5)/5.0] for both introductory and advanced chemistry laboratories positively. The format of this writing workshop can be used for online teaching or incorporated into any science laboratory course with the development of appropriate content modules.

High structure courses ask students to be active participants in the learning process with pre-class content acquisition and assessment, in-class active learning exercises, and after-class review assignments. While faculty may suggest certain strategies for success in high structure courses, it is unknown what students find valuable and what kinds of advice they would give future students. The goal of the study was therefore to analyze student advice for success from various college high structure biology and engineering courses. Students in eight different courses from two different universities all taught by the same instructor gave advice to future students on the last day of class. Over 2000 pieces of advice were coded using an iterative qualitative methodology and four major categories and 15 total sub-categories were identified. Students most frequently gave advice on study tips, followed by course expectations, interactions with their classmates and instructors, and positive thinking and this advice pattern was similar for all courses in this study. Due to the similarity of the advice, this suggests that students are giving advice on the course structure itself and thus the advice is generalizable to many college science and engineering courses.

Faculty at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS University) recognized the potential benefits for collaborative teaching and learning across disciplines. Research and development of an “Interprofessional Case Learning Project” (ICLP) lay the foundation for creation and implementation of a Project-Based Learning course. This course, “Interdisciplinary Perspectives of an Infectious Disease – Malaria,” introduced innovative interdisciplinary pedagogy into the curriculum of the School of Arts & Sciences. Designed by biologists, chemists, historians and publish health faculty, this course introduced senior Premed majors to varied methods and theories as they worked in groups to solve problems related to the infection, prevention, and treatment of an infectious disease. Students’ deliverables included journal-quality research papers and posters presented at the School of Arts & Sciences Undergraduate Research Conference.