Much attention is given these days to the incorporation of High Impact Practices (HIPs) in educational settings. Indeed, in 2008, the American Association of Colleges and Universities documented a set of 11 proven teaching and learning practices that can reliably improve educational outcomes for all students. Three of these practices come as no surprise to chemistry, physics and biology faculty. For decades, our laboratory sections have incorporated the HIPs of Learning Communities, Collaborative Assignments and Projects and Undergraduate Research. Until recently, though, it was difficult to fully utilize these HIPs at the community college level due to limited resources and course offerings. Access to technology and open education resources, however, has rapidly changed the landscape. At Salt Lake Community College, students in the Cell Biology Laboratory sections learn to connect the linear information in nucleic acid sequences and amino acid sequences with the biology and biochemistry of organisms. Each semester, students use computational biology tools and the GENI-SCIENCE platform to investigate and annotate 50,000 base pairs of the Halogeometricum borinquense genome. Working in teams, students map the genome segment for open reading frames to formulate a scientific hypothesis of where the protein coding genes are located. Each student is then assigned a set of those proposed genes to scrutinize and ultimately report on to the rest of the class. The imbedding of this authentic research project into the laboratory curriculum provides substantial learning gains and regularly spins off individual research projects for students.

Genome annotation: Authentic research project for entry-level community college students

2019 Fall National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.