Broadening Participation in Biology Education Research: A role for affinity groups in promoting social connectivity, self-efficacy, and belonging.

Discipline-based education research (DBER) has experienced dramatic growth over recent years, but with growth comes concerns about whether DBER efforts accurately represent the education landscape. By many measures, DBER does not feature a representative range of institutional contexts or a diverse array of voices. Numerous professional development efforts have sought to broaden DBER participation.

Content Coverage as a Persistent Exclusionary Practice: Investigating Perspectives of Health Professionals on the Influence of Undergraduate Coursework.

STEM undergraduates navigate lengthy sequences of prerequisite courses covering volumes of science content. Given that these courses may contribute to attrition and equity gaps in STEM, research is needed to test the assumption that prerequisite content benefits students in their future studies and careers. We investigated the relevance of prerequisite course content for students' careers through semistructured interviews with practicing nurses regarding their undergraduate anatomy and physiology (A&P) courses.

Scientist Spotlights in Secondary Schools: Student Shifts in Multiple Measures Related to Science Identity after Receiving Written Assignments.

Based on theoretical frameworks of scientist stereotypes, possible selves, and science identity, written assignments were developed to teach science content through biographies and research of counter-stereotypical scientists-Scientist Spotlights (www.scientistspotlights.org).

Engaging with CC Bio INSITES: Experiences of Barriers, Supports, and Belonging in Community College Faculty Participating in Biology Education Research.

In an effort to increase community college (CC) biology education research (BER), an NSF-funded network called CC Bio INSITES (Community College Biology Instructor Network to Support Inquiry into Teaching and Education Scholarship; INSITES for short) was developed to provide intellectual, resource, and social support for CC faculty (CCF) to conduct BER. To investigate the efficacy of this network, we asked about the barriers and supports INSITES CCF have experienced when conducting BER and how specific INSITES supports have mitigated barriers and provided support for network members to engage in BER. We conducted interviews and focus groups with 17 network participants, representing 15 different CCs.

Student-Authored Scientist Spotlights: Investigating the Impacts of Engaging Undergraduates as Developers of Inclusive Curriculum through a Service-Learning Course.

Scientist Spotlights-curricular materials that employ the personal and professional stories of scientists from diverse backgrounds-have previously been shown to positively influence undergraduate students' relatability to and perceptions of scientists. We hypothesized that engaging students in authoring Scientist Spotlights might produce curricular materials of similar impact, as well as provide a mechanism for student involvement as partners in science education reform. To test this idea and investigate the impact of student-authored Scientist Spotlights, we developed a service-learning course in which teams of biology students partnered with an instructor to develop and implement Scientist Spotlights in a biology course.

Reconsidering the Share of a Think-Pair-Share: Emerging Limitations, Alternatives, and Opportunities for Research.

The think-pair-share is a common teaching tool, but how critical is the "share" step in helping students achieve learning goals? This feature examines assumptions that instructors may make about the share, explores unanticipated impacts of the share, and provides alternatives to having students share their thoughts in front of the class.

Investigating Instructor Talk in Novel Contexts: Widespread Use, Unexpected Categories, and an Emergent Sampling Strategy.

Instructor Talk-noncontent language used by instructors in classrooms-is a recently defined and promising variable for better understanding classroom dynamics. Having previously characterized the Instructor Talk framework within the context of a single course, we present here our results surrounding the applicability of the Instructor Talk framework to noncontent language used by instructors in novel course contexts. We analyzed Instructor Talk in eight additional biology courses in their entirety and in 61 biology courses using an emergent sampling strategy.

Broadening Participation in Biology Education Research: Engaging Community College Students and Faculty.

Nearly half of all undergraduates are enrolled at community colleges (CCs), including the majority of U.S. students who represent groups underserved in the sciences.

Classroom sound can be used to classify teaching practices in college science courses.

Active-learning pedagogies have been repeatedly demonstrated to produce superior learning gains with large effect sizes compared with lecture-based pedagogies. Shifting large numbers of college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty to include any active learning in their teaching may retain and more effectively educate far more students than having a few faculty completely transform their teaching, but the extent to which STEM faculty are changing their teaching methods is unclear. Here, we describe the development and application of the machine-learning-derived algorithm Decibel Analysis for Research in Teaching (DART), which can analyze thousands of hours of STEM course audio recordings quickly, with minimal costs, and without need for human observers.

Scientist Spotlight Homework Assignments Shift Students' Stereotypes of Scientists and Enhance Science Identity in a Diverse Introductory Science Class.

Research into science identity, stereotype threat, and possible selves suggests a lack of diverse representations of scientists could impede traditionally underserved students from persisting and succeeding in science. We evaluated a series of metacognitive homework assignments ("Scientist Spotlights") that featured counterstereotypical examples of scientists in an introductory biology class at a diverse community college. Scientist Spotlights additionally served as tools for content coverage, as scientists were selected to match topics covered each week.

Beyond the Biology: A Systematic Investigation of Noncontent Instructor Talk in an Introductory Biology Course.

Instructors create classroom environments that have the potential to impact learning by affecting student motivation, resistance, and self-efficacy. However, despite the critical importance of the learning environment in increasing conceptual understanding, little research has investigated what instructors say and do to create learning environments in college biology classrooms. We systematically investigated the language used by instructors that does not directly relate to course content and defined the construct of Instructor Talk.

Phylogeography of the diamond turbot () across the Baja California Peninsula.

We compared morphology and sequenced nuclear and mitochondrial genes from 11 populations of a previously genetically unstudied "Baja California disjunct" species, the diamond turbot (). This species exhibits very limited adult movement and restriction to soft-bottom habitats but has a moderately long pelagic larval duration. Therefore, if pelagic larval duration is correlated with gene flow between Gulf of California and Pacific populations, we expect a reduced level of genetic and morphological differentiation.