How can we improve problem solving in undergraduate biology? Applying lessons from 30 years of physics education research

Dynamic reconfiguration of brain coactivation states associated with active and lecture-based learning of university physics

Academic institutions are increasingly adopting active learning methods to enhance educational outcomes. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated neurobiological differences between active learning and traditional lecture-based approaches in university physics education. Undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory physics course underwent an fMRI session before and after a 15-week semester. Coactivation pattern (CAP) analysis was used to examine the temporal dynamics of brain states across different cognitive contexts, including physics conceptual reasoning, physics knowledge retrieval, and rest. CAP results identified seven distinct brain states, with contributions from frontoparietal, somatomotor, and visuospatial networks. Among active learning students, physics learning was associated with increased engagement of a somatomotor network, supporting an embodied cognition framework, while lecture-based students demonstrated stronger engagement of a visuospatial network, consistent with observational learning. These findings suggest significant neural restructuring over a semester of physics learning, with different instructional approaches preferentially modulating distinct patterns of brain dynamics.

Bee The CURE: Increasing Student Science Self-Efficacy, Science Identity, and Predictors of Scientific Civic Engagement in a Community College CURE

"Bee the CURE" is a Power-of-Place course-based undergraduate research experience (PoP-CUREs; Jaeger et al., 2024) that combines place-based education (Demarest, 2014; Gruenewald, 2014) with CUREs, emphasizing student scientific civic engagement where research is relevant to the community where the research is taking place. PoP-CUREs have potential to build students' knowledge, skills, value, and self-efficacy when engaging with the public using science skills (i.e., scientific civic engagement). A mixed-methods sequential explanatory design utilizing surveys and semistructured interviews was used for this study (Warfa, 2016). Students made gains in science self-efficacy over the course of the semester and showed a trend of increasing science identity in both Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 semesters. Students' scientific civic knowledge, or a student's sense of how to use or apply knowledge and skills to help a community, increased significantly, while other predictors of scientific civic engagement started high and remained high throughout the course. Bee the CURE demonstrates psychosocial outcomes that are similar to previously studied CUREs and expands our understanding of how PoP-CUREs might influence outcomes with evidence that an important predictor of future scientific civic engagement increases. Implications for PoP-CURE instruction at Hispanic serving community colleges are discussed.

Variations in Student Approaches to Problem Solving in Undergraduate Biology Education

Existing research has investigated student problem-solving strategies across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; however, there is limited work in undergraduate biology education on how various aspects that influence learning combine to generate holistic approaches to problem solving. Through the lens of situated cognition, we consider problem solving as a learning phenomenon that involves the interactions between internal cognition of the learner and the external learning environment. Using phenomenography as a methodology, we investigated undergraduate student approaches to problem solving in biology through interviews. We identified five aspects of problem solving (including knowledge, strategy, intention, metacognition, and mindset) that define three qualitatively different approaches to problem solving; each approach is distinguishable by variations across the aspects. Variations in the knowledge and strategy aspects largely aligned with previous work on how the use or avoidance of biological knowledge informed both concept-based and nonconcept-based strategies. Variations in the other aspects revealed intentions spanning complete disengagement to deep interest with the course material, different degrees of metacognitive reflections, and a continuum of fixed to growth mindsets. We discuss implications for how these characterizations can improve instruction and efforts to support development of problem-solving skills.

Student Perceptions of a Framework for Facilitating Transfer from Lessons to Exams, and the Relevance of This Framework to Published Lessons

A main goal of academic courses is to help students acquire knowledge and skills that they can transfer to multiple contexts. In this article, we (i) examine students' responses to test question templates (TQTs), a framework intended to facilitate transfer, and (ii) determine whether similar transfer-promoting strategies are commonly embedded in published biology lessons. In study 1, in surveys administered over several academic quarters, students consistently reported that TQTs helped them transfer course content to exams and the real world; that multiple (two to five) examples were generally needed to understand a given TQT, leading >40% students to create their own additional examples; and that TQTs would be helpful in other science courses. In study 2, among 100 peer-reviewed lessons published by CourseSource or the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science (NCCSTS), less than 5% of lessons gave students advice about exams or helped students create additional practice problems. The latter finding is not meant as criticism of these excellent lessons, which are a boon to the biology education community. However, with TQT-like prescriptions generally absent from peer-reviewed lessons, biology instructors may wish to supplement the lessons with TQT-like strategies to explicitly connect the material to subsequent exams.

Addressing the unique qualities of upper-level biology CUREs through the integration of skill-building

Early exposure to course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) in introductory biology courses can promote positive student outcomes such as increased confidence, critical thinking, and views of applicability in lower-level courses, but it is unknown if these same impacts are achieved by upper-level courses. Upper-level courses differ from introductory courses in several ways, and one difference that could impact these positive student outcomes is the importance of balancing structure with independence in upper-level CUREs where students typically have more autonomy and greater complexity in their research projects. Here we compare and discuss two formats of upper-level biology CUREs (Guided and Autonomous) that vary along a continuum between structure and independence. We share our experiences teaching an upper-level CURE in two different formats and contrast those formats through student reported perceptions of confidence, professional applicability, and CURE format. Results indicate that the Guided Format (i.e., a more even balance between structure and independence) led to more positive impacts on student outcomes than the Autonomous Format (less structure and increased independence). We review the benefits and drawbacks to each approach while considering the unique elements of upper-level courses relative to lower-level courses. We conclude with a discussion of how implementing structured skill-building can assist instructors in adapting CUREs to their courses.

Using Students' Concept-building Tendencies to Better Characterize Average-Performing Student Learning and Problem-Solving Approaches in General Chemistry

We previously reported that students' concept-building approaches, identified a priori using a cognitive psychology laboratory task, extend to learning complex science, technology, engineering, and mathematics topics. This prior study examined student performance in both general and organic chemistry at a select research institution, after accounting for preparation. We found that abstraction learners (defined cognitively as learning the theory underlying related examples) performed higher on course exams than exemplar learners (defined cognitively as learning by memorizing examples). In the present paper, we further examined this initial finding by studying a general chemistry course using a different pedagogical approach (process-oriented guided-inquiry learning) at an institution focused on health science majors, and then extended our studies via think-aloud interviews to probe the effect concept-building approaches have on problem-solving behaviors of average exam performance students. From interviews with students in the average-achieving group, using problems at three transfer levels, we found that: 1) abstraction learners outperformed exemplar learners at all problem levels; 2) abstraction learners relied on understanding and exemplar learners dominantly relied on an algorithm without understanding at all problem levels; and 3) both concept-building-approach students had weaknesses in their metacognitive monitoring accuracy skills, specifically their postperformance confidence level in their solution accuracy.

The Tyranny of Content: "Content Coverage" as a Barrier to Evidence-Based Teaching Approaches and Ways to Overcome It

Instructors have inherited a model for conscientious instruction that suggests they must cover all the material outlined in their syllabus, and yet this model frequently diverts time away from allowing students to engage meaningfully with the content during class. We outline the historical forces that may have conditioned this teacher-centered model as well as the disciplinary pressures that inadvertently reward it. As a way to guide course revision and move to a learner-centered teaching approach, we propose three evidence-based strategies that instructors can adopt: 1) identify the core concepts and competencies for your course; 2) create an organizing framework for the core concepts and competencies; and 3) teach students how to learn in your discipline. We further outline examples of actions that instructors can incorporate to implement each of these strategies. We propose that moving from a content-coverage approach to these learner-centered strategies will help students better learn and retain information and apply it to new situations.

Designing a Curriculum-Aligned Assessment of Cumulative Learning about Marine Primary Production to Improve an Undergraduate Marine Sciences Program

We developed an assessment to track changes in understanding about marine primary production, a key concept taught across our undergraduate curriculum. Question content was informed by investigating student misunderstandings, conducting faculty interviews, and mapping primary production concepts to the curriculum. Content questions were paired with questions asking students how confident they were in their answers. Although students gained knowledge of marine primary production across educational levels, confidence data and item analysis indicated student misunderstandings on several concepts. Many students had difficulty on questions that required interpreting graphs or other higher-order thinking skills. The results set the stage for additional focused assessment and curriculum revision, and the questions may be useful in developing a large-scale, interdisciplinary marine sciences concept inventory.

Beyond the Cell: Using Multiscalar Topics to Bring Interdisciplinarity into Undergraduate Cellular Biology Courses

Western science has grown increasingly reductionistic and, in parallel, the undergraduate life sciences curriculum has become disciplinarily fragmented. While reductionistic approaches have led to landmark discoveries, many of the most exciting scientific advances in the late 20th century have occurred at disciplinary interfaces; work at these interfaces is necessary to manage the world's looming problems, particularly those that are rooted in cellular-level processes but have ecosystem- and even global-scale ramifications (e.g., nonsustainable agriculture, emerging infectious diseases). Managing such problems requires comprehending whole scenarios and their emergent properties as sums of their multiple facets and complex interrelationships, which usually integrate several disciplines across multiple scales (e.g., time, organization, space). This essay discusses bringing interdisciplinarity into undergraduate cellular biology courses through the use of multiscalar topics. Discussing how cellular-level processes impact large-scale phenomena makes them relevant to everyday life and unites diverse disciplines (e.g., sociology, cell biology, physics) as facets of a single system or problem, emphasizing their connections to core concepts in biology. I provide specific examples of multiscalar topics and discuss preliminary evidence that using such topics may increase students' understanding of the cell's position within an ecosystem and how cellular biology interfaces with other disciplines.

Step by Step: Biology Undergraduates' Problem-Solving Procedures during Multiple-Choice Assessment

This study uses the theoretical framework of domain-specific problem solving to explore the procedures students use to solve multiple-choice problems about biology concepts. We designed several multiple-choice problems and administered them on four exams. We trained students to produce written descriptions of how they solved the problem, and this allowed us to systematically investigate their problem-solving procedures. We identified a range of procedures and organized them as domain general, domain specific, or hybrid. We also identified domain-general and domain-specific errors made by students during problem solving. We found that students use domain-general and hybrid procedures more frequently when solving lower-order problems than higher-order problems, while they use domain-specific procedures more frequently when solving higher-order problems. Additionally, the more domain-specific procedures students used, the higher the likelihood that they would answer the problem correctly, up to five procedures. However, if students used just one domain-general procedure, they were as likely to answer the problem correctly as if they had used two to five domain-general procedures. Our findings provide a categorization scheme and framework for additional research on biology problem solving and suggest several important implications for researchers and instructors.