Abstract
While molecular visualization has been recognized as a threshold concept in biology education, the explicit assessment of students' visual literacy skills is rare. To facilitate the evaluation of this fundamental ability, a series of NSF-IUSE-sponsored workshops brought together a community of faculty engaged in creating instruments to assess students' biomolecular visualization skills. These efforts expanded our earlier work in which we created a rubric describing overarching themes, learning goals, and learning objectives that address student progress toward biomolecular visual literacy. Here, the BioMolViz Steering Committee (BioMolViz.org) documents the results of those workshops and uses social network analysis to examine the growth of a community of practice. We also share many of the lessons we learned as our workshops evolved, as they may be instructive to other members of the scientific community as they organize workshops of their own.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 278-286 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 1 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was funded by the National Science Foundation Improving Undergraduate STEM Education grant 1712268. Continuing support is through Research Coordination Networks in Biology Undergraduate Education grant 1920270. We thank 3D Molecular Designs, who generously sponsored our workshop lunches and offered door prizes at each workshop. We extend our appreciation to the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology for inviting us to hold workshops at their summer education meetings and to our workshop hosts, who provided invaluable logistical support for the workshops: Drs. Mary Peek of Georgia Institute of Technology, April Bednarski of Washington University in St. Louis, Pumtiwitt McCarthy of Morgan State University, Joseph Provost of University of San Diego, and Jacqueline Fajardo of University of Delaware. We also thank our external evaluator for the project, Dr. Kathleen Cornely of Providence College.
Funding Information:
Research Coordination Networks, Grant/Award Number: 1920270; National Science Foundation, Grant/Award Number: 1712268 Funding information
Funding Information:
This work was funded by the National Science Foundation Improving Undergraduate STEM Education grant 1712268. Continuing support is through Research Coordination Networks in Biology Undergraduate Education grant 1920270. We thank 3D Molecular Designs, who generously sponsored our workshop lunches and offered door prizes at each workshop. We extend our appreciation to the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology for inviting us to hold workshops at their summer education meetings and to our workshop hosts, who provided invaluable logistical support for the workshops: Drs. Mary Peek of Georgia Institute of Technology, April Bednarski of Washington University in St. Louis, Pumtiwitt McCarthy of Morgan State University, Joseph Provost of University of San Diego, and Jacqueline Fajardo of University of Delaware. We also thank our external evaluator for the project, Dr. Kathleen Cornely of Providence College.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Keywords
- assessment and the design of probes for student understanding and learning
- cooperative/collaborative education
- molecular visualization
- visual literacy